The Dying Hours

by Mark Billingham

Another burst of radio chatter. The TTFN soldiers were now openly taunting the officers in attendance.

  Thorne folded up the picture and slipped it inside his Met vest as he walked out to meet Christine Treasure. On their way towards the car, a message came through that a unit was on its way in with a young male arrested on suspicion of rape. Thorne and Treasure went through to the custody suite to wait, while the details filtered through.

  A woman attacked walking home across Ladywell Fields. The description of a suspect quickly circulated. A young man arrested within twenty minutes, still carrying a kitchen knife and making no attempt to hide the scratches on his face.

  When the suspect was brought in, Thorne recognised the boy from the cemetery; the harmless truant who had been ‘caught short’ four days earlier. The waste of time. The boy saw Thorne staring at him, nodded a casual greeting as the handcuffs were removed.

  As the boy was being booked in, Treasure took Thorne to one side. ‘Come on, there’s no way we could have known, is there?’

  Thorne was still looking across at the boy with the ragged wound beneath one eye and blood on his collar, watching as he turned out his pockets and handed their contents across to be logged by the custody sergeant. A few feet away, the arresting officer was on the radio to a colleague who had accompanied the victim to Lewisham Hospital. He said, ‘Run the rape kit as soon as she’s been patched up.’

  ‘It was a judgement call.’ Treasure hitched up her vest and straightened her hat. ‘Nobody’s fault.’

  As much to himself as to anyone else, Thorne said, ‘I keep getting them wrong though, don’t I?’

  It had always been in Thorne’s mind to avoid going straight back to the flat when his shift had ended and wait until Helen had left for work. Even though things on the domestic front seemed to be moving in the right direction, he decided that he would stick to his original plan and stop off somewhere for breakfast.

  No point pushing his luck at home as well.

  So, half an hour after signing off reports on the rape, what turned out to be a minor fracas in the shopping precinct and a dozen other incidents, Thorne stared down at his second fry-up in less than twenty-four hours. The tinned tomatoes spilling from the plate, what might have been an egg, sausages like fat, pale fingers. If the Job was messing with his head, it wasn’t doing the rest of him a lot of good either.

  ‘Yes? What you wanted?’

  Thorne looked up at the teenage girl behind the counter – what was she, Russian? – and nodded. Said, ‘Great, thanks.’

  He took out the photo of Terry Mercer and propped it up against the plastic, tomato-shaped ketchup dispenser. If the food itself didn’t do the job, he guessed it might curb his appetite a little.

  He studied it as he ate.

  Mercer had been a good-looking man thirty years ago. A Mediterranean face, fine-featured with thick black hair and dark eyes. A charmer, Thorne guessed, when he wasn’t wearing a balaclava and pointing a sawn-off shotgun at you.

  What had Caroline Dunn said to him at Gartree?

  People change. They get old…

  He became aware of the teenage girl hovering at his shoulder, waiting for the chance to lean over and take his plate away. He turned and looked up at her.

  ‘Finished?’ she asked.

  Thorne said that he was.

  ‘No good?’

  ‘I wasn’t as hungry as I thought,’ Thorne said.

  The girl reached across to pick up the dirty plate and he saw her looking at the photograph. She stood still for a moment or two, one hand on the plate, her mouth creased in concentration as if she was trying to work something out.

  ‘OK?’ Thorne asked.

  She shrugged and said, ‘It’s nothing,’ and was moving back towards the counter as Thorne’s phone began to ring.

  ‘This is Alastair Howard…’

  It took Thorne a few seconds to place the name.

  ‘You left a message, asking me to call?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Thorne said. ‘Thanks for getting back to me.’ The junior barrister on Terry Mercer’s defence team, now a senior judge. Thorne was hugely relieved to be hearing from him, having been unable to make contact four days earlier when he’d rung around to put the word out that Mercer had been released from prison.

  ‘I’d have returned your call sooner,’ Howard said, ‘but I’ve been away and then I came home to discover that an old colleague of mine had died. So, all been a bit hectic.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Thorne said.

  ‘I’d known him over thirty years, so it was something of a shock.’

  Thirty years. Thorne swallowed and looked at the picture of Terry Mercer. Those big dark eyes, a smile like it was a holiday snap. He said, ‘God.’

  ‘I know, and it was extremely unpleasant.’

  ‘Oh?’ Thorne looked across, saw that the teenage girl was watching him.

  ‘I hope you’re not eating,’ Howard said. ‘I really don’t want to put you off your breakfast.’

  Helen had evidently left for work in a hurry, as the breakfast things had not been cleared away. There was a half-drunk mug of tea on the table near the front door and gobbets of Alfie’s porridge clung to every available surface in the kitchen. Thorne knew there were Brownie points available for cleaning up, but, much as he needed them, they would have to remain unearned.

  He desperately needed to sleep – at least for a few hours – before he left the flat again. He trudged through to the bedroom and called Holland as he undressed. He told him about his conversation with Alastair Howard, about Richard Jacobson’s death.

  ‘I heard about that,’ Holland said. ‘I was going to call you.’

  Thorne said, ‘Right,’ but could not shake the suspicion that Holland was lying. He dropped down on to the edge of the bed and, with a groan, reached down to take his socks off.

  ‘Good news is there’s a Murder Squad looking at this one.’

  Thorne grunted. Howard had mentioned it.

  ‘Understandable, though.’

  ‘Should have looked at the Coopers,’ Thorne said. ‘Should have looked at all of them.’

  ‘Not too many suicides like this though, are there?’ Holland was talking quickly, he sounded nervous. ‘Immolation, or whatever you call it. Kind of thing people usually do when they want to make a point about something… you know, in public. Plus, I think the judge might have had a quiet word. Put some pressure on.’

  ‘Why is it good news, Dave?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  Thorne said nothing. He lay down and pushed his feet beneath the duvet, reached for the edge of the cover and dragged it slowly back towards his throat.

  ‘Come on, it’s got to be a good thing, surely? Whichever way you look at it.’ Holland paused, waiting for Thorne to cut in, then pressed on a little more tentatively. ‘If they do put it down as suspicious… you know, if they can get some sort of decent lead and they follow it up, this can get done properly.’

  ‘And you’re off the hook.’

  ‘Well, yeah,’ Holland said. ‘With any luck. We all are.’

  Thorne reached to turn the bedside lamp off. Holland was still talking, winding up, saying something about keeping an ear to the ground. A blade of grey light cut into the room through a gap in the curtains, but Thorne was too tired to get up and do anything about it.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  There were jokes, of course, there had to be. All part and parcel of the Job; the defence mechanism, the pressure valve, whatever you chose to call it. The Kidnap Unit had their fair share of comedians as did the Counter-Terrorist lot. The Homicide Command – naturally – and Serious and Organised, and there were probably even a few chuckles to be had every now and again in Wildlife Crime and Dog Support. On a Child Abuse Investigation Team though, for all the obvious reasons, there were more than most.

  Laugh a bloody minute on a CAIT.

  ‘It’s the way we cope, isn’t it?’ One of Helen’s colleagues had been philosophising one night, after a
few drinks too many. ‘You have a laugh and a bit of a giggle and it stops the really terrible stuff getting through, doesn’t it? Not all of it, I mean we’re only bloody human, right? But we try and see the funny side, so we only get the damage in small doses, so hopefully we don’t get damaged ourselves. It’s a bit like homeopathy, I reckon…’

  It had sounded a bit like bollocks to Helen, though she’d said nothing.

  Yes, you did whatever you could to keep certain things at arm’s length and that famous black humour helped some people deal with what they saw and heard every day. For others though, it was no more than a justification for filthy jokes; for remarks that would be wholly unacceptable in any other context.

  Her own strategy was rather more straightforward.

  Some days, she just went home and held on to Alfie that little bit tighter.

  Still, she joined in, she laughed along when it was expected. Even more so since she’d come back to work. The last thing she wanted was to give those she worked with any more reason to believe that she had been affected by what had happened three months before.

  It was a little harder than usual at the moment.

  This morning, it was nothing she hadn’t heard before; just Gill Bellinger and a few of the others, sharing a joke at the drinks machine after the briefing. The one about the stingy paedophile asking kids to pay for the sweets. Last time Helen had heard it, the comedy paedophile had been Jewish, but Bellinger had clearly not wanted to offend DC Susan Cohen.

  Helen watched Cohen laughing loudest of the lot and thought how strange it was, where people drew the line when it came to causing offence, or taking it. Clearly, her own laughter had not been quite convincing enough, because as soon as everyone had begun drifting back towards their desks, Bellinger wandered over and asked how she was.

  ‘Heard the joke before, that’s all,’ Helen said.

  Bellinger grunted. ‘I need some new material.’

  ‘What about this two-year-old with half his bones broken?’ Helen nodded towards her computer screen. ‘Should be something in there.’

  Bellinger blinked. Said, ‘Everything OK at home? Alfie all right?’

  ‘He’s fine.’

  ‘So, Tom then?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it, Gill.’

  But Helen did. The problem was finding someone to whom she could talk. She had already arranged to go and see her father at the end of her shift, but she knew how that would turn out. She would bitch about Jenny for a while and he would be sympathetic and then they would end up talking about Paul. The two of them had always got on and her father had been something of an ally when everything had fallen apart and her younger sister had begun to stir things. With Paul gone though, Jenny had miraculously appeared to forget she had ever disliked him and cast her beady eyes around for another target, aside from Helen herself, obviously. Tom had been the natural choice. Helen guessed, even though her father had yet to meet Tom, that he would take her side, as he did on most things. Comforting as that would be, she would not be able to talk to him about the situation Tom had got himself into professionally.

  Unprofessionally…

  There was probably only one person who would understand, who knew Tom well enough to talk frankly about what was happening. Helen had been considering it ever since the argument with Tom, but guessed that it would not prove to be the easiest of conversations. She might well be opening a can of worms, but with nowhere else to turn she just kept telling herself that Tom had already opened a far larger and more dangerous one.

  She did not have the number on her phone.

  As soon as Bellinger had gone, Helen went into her database and looked up the contact details for Hornsey Mortuary.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  The Jacobson house was a detached Georgian property on one of the most exclusive roads in Blackheath; the ‘London village’ that had become an enclave of professionals and well-heeled media types and was one of the priciest areas in the south-east of the city. It was certainly a world away from Catford or Lewisham, just three miles up the road.

  Eliot Place skirted the ‘black’ heath itself. It was thought by some to have been so-called in memory of the plague victims buried there, though the name was probably and somewhat more prosaically derived from the colour of the soil. There were bodies beneath it of course, as there were beneath most of London’s green spaces, but Thorne knew they were more likely those of the many killed in the battles and duels fought here or the highwaymen who had once roamed the heath and were sent to the gallows by the legal antecedents of Richard Jacobson QC.

  Jacobson, who had once been a fresh-faced pupil barrister.

  Thirty years before, when he was only twenty-two years old, when he’d been a lowly part of Terry Mercer’s defence team and done something for which he had never been forgiven.

  Thorne parked around the corner. The early-morning rain had long since cleared and it was unseasonably warm enough for him to leave his jacket in the car. He walked half the length of Eliot Place and stood looking at the house from the other side of the road.

  I really don’t want to put you off your breakfast…⁠

  The door to the double garage was closed, giving no hint of what had gone on behind it. A silver Audi was parked on the drive but there was little sign of life behind the mullioned windows upstairs or down. As Thorne crossed the road, a black and white cat jumped up from a flower bed on to the low wall that ran around the front lawn. It stretched, front paws then back, and sat watching his approach.

  Thorne stifled a yawn and wiped his fingers across eyes that were scratchy and raw. In the end, he had only managed three hours’ sleep and the buzz he might otherwise have expected at the scene of the latest murder was only dimly felt in heavy limbs and a head filled with cotton wool. He reached out to stroke the cat. It mewed and lifted its chin.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  Thorne looked across to see a woman standing near the Audi. She was in her mid-fifties, possibly a little older; full-figured, with dark hair cut just short of her shoulders. She was wearing jeans and what looked like a man’s striped shirt. She had definitely not emerged through the front door, so Thorne guessed that she had come from the back of the house; from the passageway that ran alongside the garage and probably led to a garden at the rear.

  Thorne raised a hand and walked towards her. He reached into his pocket for his warrant card as he got closer.

  ‘You’re a bit early,’ she said.

  Thorne had no idea what she was talking about. He said, ‘Sorry, I don’t think I’m who you’re expecting.’

  ‘You’re not here about Richard?’

  ‘Well, yes, but I just stopped by.’ Thorne introduced himself, told her he was with Uniform. She wiped her hands on the back of her jeans before she shook hands and Thorne wondered if she’d been gardening.

  ‘Susan Jacobson,’ she said.

  ‘I was just wondering if you’d like us to arrange for a patrol car to come by once or twice every evening,’ Thorne said. ‘Keep an eye on things.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be a problem.’

  ‘What things?’

  He could well understand that she might be perplexed at his offer, even a little annoyed. Stable doors, horses that had already bolted, all that. ‘Just to check that you’re OK, that’s all.’

  The irritation that had been apparent behind the woman’s fixed smile washed itself from her face as the compulsion towards simple politeness kicked in. She nodded and said, ‘Yes, why not. Thanks.’

  Thorne told her that he would arrange it.

  They looked at each other for a few seconds, the cat trotting over to rub itself against the woman’s legs. ‘Would you like something to drink?’ she asked. ‘Water or something, I mean.’ She smiled. ‘Don’t want you to think I’ve got a bottle of wine open before lunchtime.’

  ‘Water would be great,’ Thorne said.

  Susan Jacobson led Thorne around the car and into the pas
sageway that ran down the side of the garage. There was a large plastic water butt, black and green rubbish bins and recycling boxes; the utilitarian nature of the space balanced by the plants in a collection of old chimney pots and the hanging baskets attached to the wall every few feet.

  There was a door into the garage halfway along. Susan Jacobson walked quickly past it, but Thorne stopped.

  ‘Would you mind if I had a look?’ he asked.

  She hesitated, then shrugged. ‘I’ll be in the garden,’ she said. She nodded at the door. ‘It’s open…’

  There was a light switch just inside the door. Thorne waited for the strip lights to splutter and fizz into life, then stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

  Began breathing through his mouth.

  The garage was huge. Cupboards lined one wall and freestanding metal shelving units were arranged almost ceiling high along another. The collection of mowers and old engines had been pushed back towards the edges and covered, but wooden handles protruded through the array of tarpaulins and slivers of rusty blade could be glimpsed through gashes in black bin-bags.

  The smell was everywhere: fuel and cooked meat.

  Beyond a light dusting of fingerprint powder on the metal shelves and around the door-frame, the Scenes of Crime team had left little evidence that they were ever there. No chalk lines, no fluttering remnants of crime-scene tape so beloved of TV shows. The only physical sign that anything had merited a police presence in the first place was the large scorch mark on the garage floor.

  There was no clearly recognisable shape. It was ragged and uneven, some areas darker against the grey cement than others. Still, looking down as if he had been confronted with some oversized ink-blot test, Thorne could not help seeing the patterns of hopelessly flailing arms and of legs that kicked against the agony.

  A black snow-angel.

  Thorne took a deep breath – the taste of what lingered in the air no more pleasant than the smell – and looked around. The large boxes, the tarpaulins, those dark spaces between the rows of shelving. There were plenty of places to hide.