Scaredy Cat

by Mark Billingham

  She was sure that Tom Thorne wouldn’t be crying about anything.

  As it was, there had been quite a few times lately when she’d woken up and been pretty sure that she had been crying. She could never be positive of course, however puffy she looked, or fucked up she felt. She certainly wasn’t going to ask whoever she might have woken up next to for the details. Conversation of any sort, by that point, would be kept to a bare minimum in an effort to get rid of them as fast as possible.

  She knew what those at work who guessed at her domestic arrangements would make of them. For this reason she did her best to ensure that it stayed as guesswork only. She wasn’t frigid, so there was only one other option wasn’t there? It was a small jump for a small brain from ‘sexually active’ to ‘sexually active with superior officers’. There were still those who suspected that any woman rising through the ranks did so on her back.

  Right. Lying on her back and staring at that glass ceiling . . .

  It was nobody’s business and it was her choice. A regular boyfriend was nice in theory and a bonus at parties, but in her experience it rarely meant regular sex, and she needed that. She needed to feel wanted, and if that occasionally meant used then that was fine, because it cut both ways.

  All the time she was checking to see what was on TV and thinking about what she might eat, she knew perfectly well that she’d end up going out. She’d been thinking about it all the way back on the train. Staring at her own reflection in the blackness of the carriage window, smoking cigarettes down to the filter and wishing the hours away. She might even walk there. It was only fifteen minutes away. Following the path of the railway line all the way from Wembley Park to Harlesden.

  She’d need to get changed first though. The people she was going to see, like those on the train earlier, almost certainly had no idea what she did for a living, but she didn’t want to take any chances.

  In the single pool of light from a desktop lamp, Thorne sat, trying to keep his mind on death, but distracted constantly by an image that was full of life. Much as he tried to concentrate on Ruth Murray’s post-mortem report, he couldn’t stop the animated ­features of Charlie Garner from intruding: staring up at him from beneath the gurney, or peeking around the mortuary door.

  He had finally worked out what it was that had disturbed him so much when Charlie had looked up at him in that sitting room only a few hours before. He’d seen it instantly, but it took a while before he understood exactly what it was he’d been looking at when he stared into that child’s eyes. There, in that face, in those shining brown saucers beneath long lashes, Thorne had seen doubt.

  My mummy’s asleep . . .

  The smile had been broad and beautiful, but in those eyes had been the tiniest flicker of something like uncertainty. The smile hopeful, but the eyes betraying a knowledge Charlie Garner didn’t even know he had. Who could blame him? Now, that child could never be really certain about anything ever again. It was too harsh a lesson and learned too early.

  And each time Thorne saw that face, the flicker of doubt grew stronger . . .

  When the phone on the desk rang, Thorne started a little, and on glancing at the page in front of him, realised he’d been staring at the phrase blood-spotted conjunctivae for the past half an hour.

  ‘DI Thorne . . .’

  ‘It’s Phil. Have you read it?’

  ‘It’s right in front of me. I’ve . . . had loads of stuff to wade through.’

  ‘How was Birmingham?’

  Thorne exhaled and leaned back in his chair. He should have gone home much earlier. Even with a smooth run back to ­Kentish Town, it would be ten o’clock by the time he got in. Another couple of hours to wind down meant getting to sleep late and waking up pissed off. Hendricks, by contrast, sounded relaxed. Thorne could picture him, legs up on a piece of sixties’ black-leather furniture, some skinhead in the kitchen making them both dinner.

  ‘That bad?’ Hendricks asked.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Birmingham. Doesn’t matter, tell me tomorrow. Listen, bit of good news. Catch the bastard, we’ll put him away. There was plenty of Ruth Murray’s own tissue under her fingernails, but loads of his as well. Profile should come through some time tomorrow.’

  It was very good news. Now he would at least drive home in a good mood. ‘No need to test those teardrops you were so excited about then?’

  Hendricks snorted. ‘Nah, tell you the truth it were a fuck of a long shot. We might have had a chance if he’d worn contact lenses.’

  Thorne was intrigued. ‘This sounds good . . .’

  ‘Obvious really. A foreign body in the eye would cause a certain amount of irritation so the tear fluid would probably have contained more cellular material. See? Even better if he’d cried out of his nose actually . . .’

  ‘I don’t want to know . . .’

  ‘It’s all academic now anyway.’

  ‘No chance of a Nobel prize just yet then?’

  ‘One day, mate.’

  Thorne folded up the post-mortem report and started putting papers into his briefcase. ‘Never mind, it told us something about him anyway . . .’ There was no response. Thorne heard someone talking to Hendricks. He heard his friend’s muffled voice answering, then heard the hand being taken off the mouthpiece.

  ‘Sorry Tom, dinner’s nearly ready.’ Hendricks’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Got myself a cracker here, mate. Nice arse, and handy in the kitchen. Sorry, what were you on about?’

  ‘The tears. I’m not sure exactly what they tell us about him, mind you.’

  ‘Well, we know he was in a better mood than when he killed Carol Garner.’

  Thorne stood up and closed his case. He might make it home by quarter to, with a following wind. ‘Right . . .’

  ‘No, I mean it. Go through the report, it’s obvious. He must have calmed down or something. Maybe whatever the fucker was on had worn off. It’s a very different attack. The hyroid is intact, there’s only minimal damage to the cartilage . . .’

  Then Thorne could feel the tingle. The small current running up the nape of his neck. Making him catch his breath. Almost sexy . . .

  Something that had been nagging at him was coming into focus, revealing itself. He sat down again, opened the case and pulled out the post-mortem report. ‘Take me through this slowly can you, Phil?’

  Opening the report now, tearing pages as he turns them too quickly, speed-reading, his breath getting shorter by the second as Hendricks turns their murder case into something altogether more disturbing.

  ‘OK . . . externally, both bodies were much the same, Murray and Garner, but internally it’s a different story. Ruth Murray died from a slower, more sustained pressure on the artery. Call it a slow, hard squeezing. Carol Garner was nothing like that. She had bruises on the back of her skull where he smacked her head on the floor as he was throttling her. That was . . . frenzied. With Ruth Murray it was different. Maybe he’d got the anger out of his system. Maybe that’s his pattern. You tell me mate . . .’

  Then, Thorne knew. No, not his pattern . . .

  The tears. A big man’s tears on a body, outdoors. A body less damaged, wept upon. Elsewhere, a child in a house, nuzzling what was once the sweet-smelling neck of his mother, now bruised, and bloody, and broken inside. The wrapper from a chocolate bar, discarded . . .

  Was he taller than your Grandad?

  And Charlie Garner slowly, defiantly, shaking his head.

  ‘Phil, can I call you back . . . ?’

  Tired as he was, Holland had still not left. Thorne’s expression, as he burst into the office next door, was enough to wake him up in a second.

  ‘The stabbings . . . tell me about the stabbings.’ Thorne’s voice low, measured, but with a scream of something – ­excitement maybe, or horror – lurking just beneath the surface.<
br />
  ‘Sir . . . ?’

  Moving across the cramped office, talking quickly. ‘Two women, both stabbed on the same day. July, I think you said.’ Thorne nodded towards the computer, trying to stay calm. ‘Call them up.’

  Holland spun the chair round and began to type, trying to recall the details. ‘One in Finchley, I think. The other one . . . much further south if I remember . . .’ The relevant documents appeared on his screen and Holland studied them for a second or two. ‘Forest Hill, that’s right . . .’ He scrolled slowly through the document, shaking his head. ‘No . . . no . . . it’s not possible. He couldn’t have done them both.’

  Thorne nodded and glanced out of the window. His eye was taken by the sparks flying up from beneath a tube train passing below on its way south from Colindale; lolling heads in the brightly lit carriages, snaking away from him as the track curved round and out of sight.

  ‘He didn’t.’

  Holland stared at him, waiting. Thorne stood stock still and spoke slowly, but Holland could see his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides. ‘The knives used might have been similar, might not, I don’t know . . . not sure it matters. The pattern and depth of the wounds though . . . in all probability the number of wounds, on each of the victims, will be at odds with each other. The . . . character of the two attacks will be completely different.’

  Holland turned back to his screen and typed again, calling up SOC and pathology reports as Thorne continued. ‘One of the women will have died from multiple stab wounds. Vicious . . . indiscriminate . . . savage. The other, probably one single wound, to the heart, I would guess, or . . .’

  Holland spun round again. The look on his face told Thorne all he needed to know . . .

  Brigstocke answered his mobile on the first ring.

  ‘Russell Brigstocke . . .’ The voice low, betraying annoyance.

  ‘It’s Tom . . .’

  ‘DI Thorne . . .’ Spoken for somebody else’s benefit.

  The meeting with Detective Superintendent Jesmond had probably turned into dinner. So much the easier.

  ‘We’re onto something. Tell Jesmond. Call it a breakthrough, he’ll like that.’ He turned to share the moment with Holland but the DC was studying the documents on his screen intently. Trying to make sense of it all. ‘Tell him it’s one hell of a good news-bad news routine . . .’

  ‘I’m listening,’ Brigstocke said.

  ‘I don’t think we’re looking for one man.’

  Thorne expected a pause, and he got one. Then: ‘Are you saying that these murders might not actually be connected?’

  ‘No I’m not. They are connected, I’m certain of that.’ Thorne knew the look that Brigstocke would be wearing. Contained excitement, like trying to hold a shit inside. He wondered what Jesmond, no doubt holding a large glass of red wine and studying his DCI’s strange expression, would be making of it.

  Brigstocke was starting to sound a little impatient. ‘So, what is it? A new lead on the killer?’

  Thorne kept it nice and simple. ‘Killers, Russell. Plural. There’s two of them.’

  1985

  It was a moment he would always remember. Karen sitting on the bank, pushing a strand of blonde hair behind her ear, and Stuart smiling, mouth full of chocolate as always, his dark eyes focusing on something in the distance, searching for it, seeking out the source of their next adventure.

  And him, looking from one to the other, nervous but happy, the sun in his eyes and a small cloud of gnats swirling in front of his face . . .

  It was a moment that took him back to a day two summers earlier. That day with the cricket bat. The day when he saw Karen for the first time. That was when he and Stuart were at the same school of course. Before the business with the air pistol . . .

  The two of them weren’t really supposed to see each other after the Bardsley incident. Following the expulsion, efforts had been made to keep them apart, and for a while Palmer had been happy enough to go along with that. After all, the police had told their parents that it would be better for everybody if they were not allowed to be together. There had been talk of ‘influence’ and of ‘geeing up’. He missed the excitement though, he missed the unpredictability, and he was delighted when Stuart, once they’d started hanging around together again, told him that he’d missed it too. Plus, he always felt better about being around Karen, if Stuart was close by.

  Karen was older than he was, closer to Stuart’s age, but Stuart couldn’t make her laugh the way he could. He’d always been the one that got her giggling, ever since that day when she’d crawled through the hole in the fence and seen the business with the frog. There were times, when he saw the two of them whispering, or smoking, or watched them walking ahead of him along by the railway line, that he would start to feel like he shouldn’t be there. Then Karen would stop and smile that smile at him and ask him to pull some stupid face, or put on a silly voice or something and he would soon have her in fits. Sometimes he thought that perhaps she was teasing him a little, but he didn’t really mind. He could see how important he was to her, and to Stuart. He could see the three of them together, friends for good, the long grass of the railway embankment becoming the carefully tended lawn of a college quadrangle and the back garden of one of the big houses that each of them owned . . . and finally, the rambling parkland of that Heath in London his mum had taken him to once, where the three of them would sit together on a park bench, with dogs, and perhaps children.

  Palmer knew, as much as he knew anything at barely fourteen, that he was in love.

  Karen stood up and looked around for a few seconds before half-running, half-tumbling down the bank. She pretended that she was going to crash into Nicklin, and he pretended to be frightened. At the last minute, she jumped and Nicklin staggered back as he caught her, shouting and laughing, one hand holding tight to her arse.

  Palmer laughed too and, swatting the swarm of gnats aside, followed them as they each lit a cigarette and began walking slowly towards the small group of blackened, broken-down railway buildings in the distance.

  Once inside the main building – a disused equipment shed – they did the usual quick sweep, searching for signs of habitation. Tramps slept here sometimes. The place still smelt of stale piss and strong lager. They’d found the remains of a fire a few times before now, and empty tins and syringes, and once, a used condom which Nicklin had picked up and chased Karen around with for a while. Today the place seemed even more deserted than usual. The usual fixtures and fittings. A mountain of fag ends, some old newspapers, a soggy, mouldering roll of carpet that had once been a dosser’s bed.

  Huge bluebottles flew around their heads as Palmer threw stones at the remaining slivers of glass in the rotting window frames. Nicklin stubbed out his fag and looked around for something, anything, to spark him off, and Karen wandered around singing the latest Duran Duran single, her light, high voice echoing off the grimy Artex walls.

  ‘Let’s go. Fuck-all in here.’ Nicklin aimed a kick at an empty bottle. It skittered across the concrete floor and into the far wall where it smashed.

  Palmer cheered. ‘We could start a fire or something . . .’

  ‘Let’s all have a dump,’ Karen said, ignoring him and leering at Nicklin. She began to laugh and Palmer turned away, blushing. He hated it when she talked like that. She would squat down in the long grass sometimes and he couldn’t bear it.

  ‘Boring,’ Nicklin said. ‘Fucking eggs for lunch anyway. Couldn’t squeeze one out even if I wanted to.’ He lit another cigarette from a packet of ten Silk Cut. Karen took a loose one from the top pocket of her denim jacket and moved over to join him. She took the cigarette from Nicklin’s mouth and used it to light her own.

  When Palmer turned round, Karen and Nicklin had gone. For a moment he was frightened, but then he heard them just outside, murmuring. He looked out through the b
roken window towards the embankment opposite. There was a housing estate at the top, where Stuart lived, and he’d seen people emptying their bins down there, using the grassy, green bank as a rubbish tip. Shitting in it, every bit as much as Karen or Nicklin did.

  He still loved the place though. He knew where there was a foxes’ earth hidden in the roots of a large oak tree. He’d once found a baby jay at the foot of the very same tree, bright blue and puffed-up, miaowing like a cat, calling for its mother. He knew where to find massive blackberries and which species of butterfly were attracted by the buddleia that flourished all over the place, and he knew where he could find slow worms and grass snakes nesting beneath rusting sheets of corrugated iron . . .

  He was startled by a footstep next to him, the sound of broken glass being ground into concrete. He turned quickly to see Nicklin at his shoulder, smiling like he’d finally found something.

  ‘Karen wants to do it with you.’ His tone, matter of fact. Palmer said nothing. Nicklin took a drag on his cigarette, waited, shrugged. ‘I’ll tell her you’re not up for it then, shall I?’

  ‘Everything?’ Palmer’s voice, helium-high, his breathing ragged.

  ‘That’s what she said. She’s had it with loads of blokes, done all sorts, it’s not a big deal really. Probably suck you off as well . . .’ He ran a hand across his head. His normally thick black hair had been cut suedehead-short for the summer.

  ‘What does she want me to do?’

  ‘Just fuck her, mate.’ Then a snort and a laugh. Nicklin’s voice high too, his movements jerky. Excited . . .

  Palmer turned to look at him, his palm already pressing against the front of his trousers. ‘No . . . I want to. I just mean, does she want me to go outside or will she . . . ? Come on, Stu . . . what?’ Trying to force a smile. Mates together. Not scared.