Lifeless tt-5

by Mark Billingham

  Thorne laughed, stepped right to obscure the Irishman’s reflection. “Fuck off.”

  Though he’d been into the cafe at the London Lift a couple of times, this was the first time Thorne had seen Brendan Maxwell in over a week. The first time since Radio Bob Asker’s funeral.

  “How was it?” Thorne asked.

  “Even grimmer than you’d expect. We took a few of Bob’s mates up in a minibus, you know? A couple of the older guys he used to knock around with.” He began to gesture with his hands. “So, it’s us and all of them on the right and his ex-wife and kid plus a couple of cousins or whatever on the left.”

  Thorne, thinking there were probably more people there than at the last funeral he’d attended.

  “It was fucking weird,” Maxwell said. “Like you’ve got this poor old fella’s two lives right there, one on either side of the church. No prizes for guessing which side was having the most fun, either. There was a bottle of something in a pocket or two, right, and all his mates were going on about what a laugh Bob had been, you know? How they should have been playing appropriate songs in the church like ‘Radio Ga-Ga,’ and how bloody funny Bob would have thought that was.”

  He smiled wryly and Thorne reciprocated.

  Maxwell’s smile became a snort. “That would have been funny, right ?”

  Thorne had wanted to have something meaningful played at his dad’s funeral, but he hadn’t been able to think of a particular song or piece of music. He’d never had a chance to ask. They’d settled for some dirge of a hymn that his father would have hated.

  Maxwell leaned back against a locker. “No chance of any laughter, though. No fucking way. No chance of any joy. Bob’s ex-wife sat there like the whole thing was keeping her from something important like a manicure, and the daughter just cried and cried. All the way through.” He kicked his heel against the metal door behind him. “They’re burying Paddy Hayes day after tomorrow. I’m getting plenty of wear out of the black suit.”

  “We’re doing our best, Bren.”

  Maxwell raised his eyebrows as if to ask exactly what constituted Thorne’s or anybody else’s best? Thorne was well aware that, although Maxwell was privy to his role within the investigation, he couldn’t say too much about how it was progressing.

  “We need to find out who the first bloke was,” he said. “The first victim.”

  Maxwell said nothing for ten, maybe fifteen seconds, then pushed himself away from the locker. “Good luck with that. Because I want to put the fucking suit away for a while.” He put on the De Niro voice to lighten the mood a little: “Do you know what I’m saying here?” He stopped at the door. “Phil’s coming in later, by the way, for the fortnightly surgery. I think he wants a word.”

  “Fair enough.” Hendricks had been providing an ad hoc medical service to some of the Lift’s clients for the last couple of years. Doling out bandages, plasters, and, best of all, the odd prescription. He had some cracking stories about the absurd lengths people had gone to to get him to prescribe something. To get him to prescribe anything

  …

  “He’s got a bee in his bonnet about something or other,” Maxwell said.

  “About the case?”

  “God knows. He wouldn’t tell me if it was.”

  “Right.”

  Thorne looked at him and wondered if that was true. He knew very well that where partners were concerned, the rules about not discussing certain aspects of a case could become distinctly bendable. When it came down to it, Thorne really didn’t give a monkey’s, but he reckoned he knew his friend pretty well: Phil Hendricks would sell state secrets for a blow job or a Thierry Henry hat trick.

  The morning briefing was becoming more like morning assembly all the time.

  Brigstocke stopped in midsentence, waited for the murmuring at the back of the room to die down. “What’s so fucking important?” he said.

  “Sorry, sir. We were just talking about the horse.” The last word was more spluttered than spoken, and the rest of the room immediately broke up.

  “Right.” Brigstocke sighed. “Anyone not heard the horse story?”

  A few hands were raised among the forty or so in the room. One or two blank faces…

  The area car had, by all accounts, been called out in the early hours after reports of a horse running along the A1. Having caught the animal, the two officers were then faced with the problem of getting it anywhere, and hit on the bright idea of towing the horse. They wrapped a length of “Police-Do Not Cross” tape around the animal’s neck and while one officer drove, his mate crouched in the open boot of the car and pulled the horse along. This worked fine for a while, with the car gradually speeding up and the horse cantering along quite nicely. Unfortunately, what they had fashioned was less of a tow rope and more of a noose, so that without warning the horse had suddenly collapsed in a heap on the road and begun to shake dramatically. Certain that he’d killed it, the officer climbed out of the boot and walked over to the stricken beast, just in time for the horse to leap to its feet and charge through the nearest hedge, dragging the stunned copper behind him.

  Brigstocke wound up by explaining that the officer concerned was recovering in Chase Farm Hospital, while the horse, who was still at large, had last been sighted galloping gaily along a B-road near the gloriously named Trotter’s Bottom.

  Then he finished his briefing.

  “That sort of thing’s good for morale,” Brigstocke said. “Pretty welcome round here at the moment.”

  Holland piped up. “It can’t hurt to remind ourselves every so often that it isn’t all murder and mayhem…”

  “Right, and you told it very well,” Kitson said.

  Russell Brigstocke seemed pleased with the compliment as he walked around his desk and sat down in the chair behind. His office was one of three on a corridor that snaked alongside the large, open-plan incident room. Holland and DC Andy Stone were based in one of the other two; and while the man she usually shared it with was on gardening leave, Yvonne Kitson was sole occupant of the third. These officers-together with office manager DS Samir Karim-had followed Brigstocke into his office. As the everyday core of Team 3, it was their practice to gather here after the formalities of the morning and catch up. To brainstorm and to bitch a little. It was off-the-record, and what was said was usually nearer the mark than much of the official briefing that preceded it.

  “It’s not… hugely exciting, is it?” Brigstocke said. Holland and Stone were leaning against the wall near the door. Kitson and Karim had commandeered the available chairs.

  Holland replied for all of them: “We nearly got lucky with Susan Jago. We’ll get lucky next time.”

  “Right,” Kitson said. “There’s still plenty of calls coming in.”

  “Plenty of ’em from fruitcakes.” Brigstocke straightened the picture of his wife and kids that sat on his desk in a scarred, metal frame. This sole attempt at personalizing his office had made it far more attractive than most of the other airless, magnolia boxes that honeycombed Becke House. “Why do these morons ring up?”

  “I’ve got three officers on the phones full-time,” Karim said.

  Stone shrugged. “It’s got to be our best bet, though.”

  Brigstocke was not one of them, but there were plenty of senior officers who spoke, who thought only in cliches. As the case stood, they’d have been spoiled for choice. Every available drawing board had been located and gone back to. The book by which things were done was being pawed until its spine cracked. “Our only bet,” Brigstocke said.

  There’d been a flurry of activity in the days following Robert Asker’s murder, but now, in reality, there was little to be done but donkey work. The response to appeal posters, press updates, and the continuing profile being appended to the picture of the first victim meant dozens of calls to be chased up daily. There were the obvious cranks to be eliminated; those who turned out to be cranks and were then eliminated; and those, like Susan Jago, who were genuine, but proved to be u
ltimately worthless. The team’s dedicated Intelligence Unit, meanwhile, was sifting through endless hours of CCTV footage taken in and around the relevant area. Aside from the predictable brawls and drug deals, and the occasional bout of drunken coupling in a doorway, there was nothing much to merit pressing freeze – frame. It was hard when nobody really knew what they were looking for.

  Suspicious behavior in London’s glittering West End? There was plenty of that. Dodgy-looking characters? More than you could shake a shitty stick at…

  What few officers were left had gone back out onto the streets, but with even less luck than before. If there was any information out there to be gathered, people were keeping it to themselves. The latest death had only led those who might still be at risk to close ranks even further.

  There were tighter lips and still greater suspicion.

  “Trevor Jesmond was less than thrilled with last night’s Standard, ” Brigstocke said.

  Kitson groaned. “It was silliness, guv, that’s all…”

  “It just got blown up,” Karim said.

  Close enough to the responses Brigstocke had heard when he’d raised the subject at the main briefing. But it was still embarrassing

  …

  The day before, an officer had been trying to question a group of older rough sleepers by the Embankment. When they’d become what he deemed to be overaggressive, he’d panicked and handcuffed one of them to some railings. The old man’s caseworker had contacted the team at Charing Cross, and although the mess had eventually been sorted out, some bright spark had called the Evening Standard and the old man had cheerfully re-created the incident for a photographer.

  Russell Brigstocke had spent an hour on the phone the night before, having his ear chewed. He looked up at the four in front of him. “This is not how we deal with this community. Especially not now.”

  “It was a one-off,” Holland said. “I know it looked bad…”

  Brigstocke shook his head, unimpressed, and looked over at Kitson. “Spread the word, will you, Yvonne? These people were vulnerable enough before some nutter started killing them. We’re starting to look like fucking idiots.”

  He leaned back in his chair, exhausted at a little after ten in the morning. Hendon and beyond were the color of oatmeal outside his window.

  Thorne had spent most of the morning begging. Sitting against a wall at the top end of Regent Street, with a blanket across his legs and his rucksack laid out in front to catch the coins. He’d picked a spot nice and close to a cash point, and while he wasn’t expecting too many banknotes to come his way, people did already have their wallets out, so he’d done fairly well.

  He had also turned down a fairly lucrative offer of work…

  A man in Timberland boots and designer casuals had squatted down and asked if Thorne would be interested in making some real money. It was messy work, as it turned out, but certainly paid better than begging. All Thorne had to do was catch a tube up to Camden or Hampstead-a travelcard would be supplied-and spend a few hours going through the bins at the back of one or two big houses. Thorne could guess how it worked. He’d be paid a few quid an hour and then anything useful he dug up and handed over-credit-card slips, bank statements, whatever-would be sold on for a very healthy profit. You could get fifty notes for someone’s credit-card details; passport documents and the like were worth even more. The homeless were perfect for the job, of course. They were smelly and shitty already, so why would they object to rooting through someone’s garbage?

  Thorne had told the man that he’d think about it and the man had given him the name of a pub where he could be contacted. Someone would certainly be making contact with him once Thorne had passed the details on…

  When a five-pound note fluttered down onto his rucksack, Thorne looked up and saw Hendricks looming above him.

  “A cup of tea’s bloody extortionate these days,” Hendricks said. “And coffee’s just ridiculous. You won’t see a lot of change out of that if you go to Starbucks…”

  “I’ll try not to.”

  “So, how’s it going?”

  Hendricks squatted down next to him, much as the bin man had done earlier. They spoke in low voices, but Thorne was relaxed enough. If any rough sleeper were to see them talking, it would not look out of the ordinary. Most of them knew Hendricks from the surgery work he did at the Lift.

  “If anyone comes by, I’ll have to start examining you,” Hendricks said.

  “Did you actually want something?”

  “I just wanted to run this idea by you… Well, I’ve done it anyway, but I wanted to let you know.”

  “Is this the bee in your bonnet that Brendan was on about?”

  Hendricks rolled his eyes. “He’s a wanker sometimes…”

  “Are you two not getting on?”

  Hendricks was about to say something, but stopped himself. He took a moment and the irritation seemed to disappear. “He’s very down about what’s happening, which is understandable. A lot of his clients are obviously upset, so things are tense all round.”

  Thorne knew that Maxwell was right to be worried. For anyone left behind after a murder, life was changed, was blighted forever. The others sleeping rough on the streets were the closest thing these murder victims had to friends and family. Even if the man responsible was caught, readjustment would not be easy. Maxwell and others like him would be the ones who had to deal with the fallout…

  “So, run it by me,” Thorne said.

  “It’s this tattoo thing. We know that the tattoo on the first victim isn’t unique anymore, right? Susan Jago thinks the one her brother’s got is a bit different, but it’s got to be fairly close to identical or she wouldn’t have thought it was him. So we can look for it. We can try and find another one. I mean, all this is dependent on her brother being dead, so it might be a waste of time, but…”

  “Have you talked to Brigstocke about this?”

  “It’s probably a stupid idea. I was just thinking about how I could do something to help Susan Jago.”

  Thorne pulled up his knees, hugged them to his chest. “Let’s hear it, then.”

  “It’s not complicated. I just went to a few Web sites. The Pathological Society of Great Britain, the Association of Clinical Pathologists, the Royal College of Pathologists…”

  “How many bloody pathologists are there?”

  “I went on to the message boards and described the tattoo. Asked anyone who’d come across anything similar to get in touch. The RCP’s got an online database which I can access because I’m a member, so I basically sent out a mass e-mail to pretty much every pathologist in the country. If Chris Jago is dead, this might be a way to trace him. Like I said, probably a waste of time…”

  “Worth a try, though,” Thorne said.

  “Actually, it wasn’t a complete waste of time. I managed to sign up for a course on stem-cell differentiation and I applied for a credit card.”

  “There you go, then.”

  They looked up and watched as a gaggle of jabbering American teenagers hurried past in a frenzy of clean hair and perfect teeth. When the group had cleared, Thorne found himself staring across the pavement, exchanging blank looks with a man wearing a sandwich board. Thorne had earned enough in the morning to treat himself to the?4.95 all-youcan-eat Chinese buffet being advertised…

  “Why didn’t you go home to have a shower?” Hendricks said.

  “You and Brendan really do tell each other everything.”

  “Seriously, though…”

  Thorne looked at him as if he were losing his mind. “I’m supposed to be working undercover, Phil. I can hardly just pop home when I’m feeling a bit grubby.”

  “That’s crap. This is a transient community, you know it is. People come and go all the time. No one’s keeping tabs on you, are they? Nobody’s going to bat an eyelid if you disappear for an afternoon. You could jump on a tube and go home for a few hours. Recharge your batteries. You could watch a game and get a decent bloody curry if you
felt like it.”

  “I’ve got a job to do.”

  “It’s mental…”

  “Have you finished?” Thorne leaned forward, began to scoop up the coins from his flattened rucksack. A ten-pence piece fell to the pavement and rolled toward the man with the sandwich board. “Haven’t you got any bodies waiting for you?”

  The young trainee detective constable would have found conversation on just about any topic more interesting than the work he was supposed to be doing, but the salacious detail was coming thick and fast.

  “I swear, I’m knackered, mate,” Stone said. “She wants a good seeing to every lunchtime. I’ve hardly got time to squeeze in a sandwich.”

  Karim leered. “What? She’s kinky about food, as well?”

  Stone, Karim, and Holland were gathered around an L-shaped arrangement of desks in the incident room. The TDC, whose name was Mackillop, sat at a computer, his mouth hanging slightly open.

  “You can keep your eighteen-year-olds,” Stone said. “This woman’s divorced, in her forties…”

  Karim lifted his backside onto the desk, slapped out a complex rhythm on his thighs. “Single and up for it.”

  “She’s fit, she knows what she’s doing…”

  “She’s obviously desperate,” Holland said.

  Stone nodded, laughing. “She’s fucking grateful, is what she is. And she goes like a bat in a biscuit tin.”

  The reaction from the other three was predictably noisy. The laughter began to die down quickly when Kitson was spotted coming across. Mackillop was tapping at his keyboard again by the time she arrived at the desk.

  “What am I missing?” she said.

  Stone didn’t miss a beat. “Not a lot, guv. Just talking about that pair of plonkers with the horse…”

  “Right.” She didn’t buy it for a minute.

  Holland saw her flush slightly as she picked up a piece of paper from the desk and pretended to read it. He knew very well that Kitson had once been used to this. That the sudden descent of awkward silences onto groups of her colleagues had been an everyday occurrence for her. He felt bad, but there was little he could do. She was one of the boys only up to a point, and even if they were happy to tell her what they’d been talking about, the lie had already made it impossible. What could he possibly say, anyway: It’s okay, guv, we were talking about Stoney’s sex life, not yours?