Lifeless tt-5

by Mark Billingham

  Standing alone on the other side of the road near the tube station was one of the few black men Thorne had seen in his time on the streets. Maxwell had told him early on that there were so few black and Asian rough sleepers because those communities were closer-knit; that they believed in the extended family. Basically, he’d said, it came down to how much people gave a shit. It made sense to Thorne, who knew that were he even able to find any of his cousins- first, second, or whatever-none of them would be inclined to take him in if he found himself in real trouble. He also knew, of course, that he’d be equally reluctant were he the one being asked to help. He’d seen enough blood to know that it was certainly thicker than water. But he’d also seen enough of it spilled within families to know that the phrase meant less than bugger-all.

  Spike saw Thorne looking around. “Told you. There’s all sorts.. .”

  “Must be great soup,” Thorne said.

  It arrived, and it wasn’t. Ladled into Styrofoam bowls from a huge metal saucepan in the back of a Volvo estate. But it was hot, dished out with a smile, and, crucially, with no questions asked. This was another reason why the soup run remained popular, and why teenage backpackers could stand in line with those who’d been sleeping rough for decades.

  Caroline crossed the road to a bench and lit up as a very tall man, six feet five or more and cradling his bowl of soup, sauntered up to where Spike and Thorne were finishing theirs. Thorne put his empty bowl on to the windowsill behind him, watched as Spike tossed his into the gutter. Thorne had to fight the urge to march over and pick it up.

  The tall man and Spike greeted each other warmly and Spike made the introductions: “This is Holy Joe.”

  The man looked down at Thorne and gave a small nod. He was wearing a Queen’s Park Rangers bobble hat and trainers, and what looked like a long brown robe beneath a tightly buttoned donkey jacket.

  “Who was it this time?” Spike asked.

  “Nuns,” the man said. “They’re the fucking worst.”

  Spike explained that Joe spent most of his time falling upon the tender mercies of a variety of different church organizations: the Jesus Army; the Salvation Army; the Quakers; the Young Jewish Volunteer Corps; the Sisters and Brothers of Just About Anybody. A few weeks at a time of free food and accommodations for the price of a daily Bible class or prayer meeting.

  “I’ve got a hundred and seven crosses in a plastic bag,” Joe said. He took a slurp of soup. “Wooden ones, plastic ones. There’s dozens of Bibles…”

  “I bet you knew Paddy Hayes,” Thorne said. “Spike’s mate. The one who was killed. He was a God-botherer, wasn’t he?”

  Joe took a step back into the road, scraped the sole of his training shoe against the curb as though he were trying to remove dogshit. “Yeah, but Paddy was a bit of a lightweight.”

  Thorne was still convinced that Jago and the first victim would provide the answer as to why these murders had happened. Why they were still happening. But how the killer selected the subsequent victims, if it was anything other than random, might give the police their best chance of catching him quickly. The idea that he was choosing victims from among distinct groups was definitely a strong possibility, but Thorne suddenly wondered if there might be a church connection.

  “You can ask this man anything,” Spike said. “He could do religion and all that shit on Mastermind. Your specialist subject, innit, Joe?”

  Hadn’t Robert Asker thought that he could talk to God on his radio? Maybe he’d been to a meeting or two. Thorne made a mental note to ask Caroline when he got the chance.

  Spike was getting excited, shifting from foot to foot. “Go on, ask him something. He knows the Bible fucking backward.”

  Joe nodded solemnly. “And the Talmud. And the Koran. I’m not fussy.”

  “I can’t think of anything,” Thorne said.

  “Ask him all the books in the Bible. Ask him to do them in order. ..”

  “Too easy,” Joe said.

  Thorne thought about his father, who would have loved a game like this. The old man wouldn’t have slept until he’d found out the right answer and written it down somewhere. In his last few years he’d taken to ringing Thorne up in the early hours of the morning, demanding lists of answers to all manner of bizarre trivia questions.

  “Ask him,” Spike said.

  Give me a dozen big cats… The three fastest ball games in the world… All the kings and queens of England. Go on, I’ll give you the first couple to start…

  “Go on, anything you like.”

  “Okay,” Thorne said. He pointed to the bowl in Joe’s hands. “Could Jesus have turned that into soup?”

  There was the swish of a revolving door behind them and a man walked quickly from the B amp;A Tobacco building and hurried across the road. He wore a tailored overcoat and carried a metal briefcase, and his free hand struggled to tuck in one end of a bright red scarf that had caught in the wind.

  Holy Joe turned and shouted cheerily after him. “Oi, mate, got any ciggies for me?”

  The man didn’t even bother to look up. “Piss off,” he said.

  Back on the Strand, they walked east toward Fleet Street. They passed the “ghost” Aldwych underground station, half of its boarded-up entrance now home to a Photo-Me booth, and Thorne gave Spike and Caroline a potted history. He told them how the station, originally called Strand, had fallen into disuse a number of times in the century since it had been opened; how a man had been eaten on one of the escalators in An American Werewolf in London, and how, during the Second World War, it had been home to the British Museum’s collection of mummies.

  As they crossed toward St. Clement Danes, serene on its traffic island, Thorne pointed toward the spikes and spires of the Royal Courts of Justice, brutal against the night sky beyond the church. As a civil court, it was not a place Thorne knew well, but he did know that the man who built its clock was strangled to death when his tie got caught in the mechanism.

  “Bloody hell,” Spike said. “You know some seriously weird shit.”

  Thorne thought about everything he’d learned, from Spike more than anyone, in the past few weeks. He thought about the things he’d been shown and the people he’d met. He thought about the knowledge that had been passed on to him.

  “ I know some weird shit…?”

  Around the back of the church, a number of those who had been at the soup run had gathered to stand around and drink. To kill time until the next one. Caroline and Spike drifted away to talk to a couple of junkies whose conversation, by the look of them, would not be sparkling.

  “Got-a-beer?”

  Thorne turned to see an older man with a shock of white hair and a nose like an overripe strawberry standing far too close to him.

  “Got-a-beer, mate?”

  The words weren’t slurred exactly, but ran easily into one as though they belonged together. It sounded both casual and aggressive, the last word fading into a breath like hot fat spitting. Thorne wasn’t sure if the man had simply not got him down as a fellow rough sleeper, or was just so far gone that he didn’t care whom he asked. Either way, the answer was going to be the same.

  “Sorry.” Thorne patted the can in his pocket. “Just got the one and that’s mine.”

  “You’re not drinking it.”

  Thorne took the can of Special Brew from his pocket. He was going to fill it with weak stuff later, but what the hell. He yanked back the ring pull. “Yes, I am.”

  As Thorne brought the can to his mouth, the man stepped even closer. “Give us a fucking swig then.”

  The man was leaning into him from the side. Thorne could feel the material of the man’s filthy body warmer against his father’s coat.

  “Just the one swig…”

  “Fuck off,” Thorne said.

  The man moved back sharply as though he’d been pushed. He squinted at Thorne for ten or fifteen seconds, his feet planted firmly enough, but the top half of his body swaying gently. Then he cocked his head. “You’re a co
pper,” he said.

  Thorne grunted and laughed. Took a mouthful of beer. It tasted vile.

  “You’re Old Bill. ’Course you are.” He was starting to raise his voice. “I know you are.”

  “Listen, mate…”

  “I know a piggy…”

  Thorne thrust the can toward him. “Here, you can take it…”

  “Oink! Oink!” He smacked a fat hand against the side of his leg over and over as he shouted: “You’re a copper, you’re a rozzer, you’re a rotten, filthy fucker…”

  Thorne was on the verge of driving the base of the can against the old man’s head when Spike appeared next to him.

  “All right?”

  As Thorne turned his head the man reached out and grabbed the beer.

  Spike took hold of his arm. “Give us that back, you twat…”

  “Let him have it,” Thorne said.

  When Spike let go, the man took a couple of steps back, pulling the can of beer close to his chest. “He’s a copper. I swear he’s a fucking copper.”

  Spike spoke like he was humoring a mental patient. “ ’Course he is.” He cupped his hands around his mouth, shouted after the old man, although he was no more than a few feet away. “You don’t know how fucking wrong you are, pal.”

  They watched as the man walked to the railings at the edge of the curb and started to drink.

  Spike looked at Thorne. “You didn’t used to be a copper, did you?”

  Thorne turned and walked away, heading around the narrow strip of pavement that circled the church.

  The old man was clearly a head case, yet Thorne was still unnerved by the confrontation. Was there a chance he had been recognized? Could the old man have been someone Thorne had put away years before? It didn’t really matter; from what Spike had shouted, it was clear that he still believed Thorne had spent time in prison.

  He thought back to the case he’d been working on just before his father had died. The case that might have been the reason his father had died. He thought about a line he’d drawn, and then stepped across as casually as if he were entering another room.

  Ex – offender was exactly right.

  He stopped at the front of the church, looked up at the blackened statue of Gladstone, at the defiant bronze figure of Bomber Harris.. .

  Something began to suggest itself.

  There were other statues around the front of the church. He didn’t need to know whom they honored. Even from behind, the bearing of these men told Thorne what they were. He turned and walked back toward the entrance of the church, remembering it even as he saw the three letters, spelled out horizontally on a pale blue cross, beneath the figure of a golden eagle. St. Clement Danes was the RAF church…

  Something blurred started to come sharply into focus.

  He thought about the museum he’d walked past earlier with Russell Brigstocke. He remembered something Spike had said when he was talking about the differing backgrounds of people who were sleeping rough:

  It’s a right old mix, though. I fucking love it, like. You’ve got your immigrants, you’ve got…

  And then Thorne knew exactly who might have their blood group as a tattoo.

  It was funny, he thought, about old friends.

  Sitting in the flat, he thought about the strange ways things could pan out if you came across them again. Funny how it happened as well. It might be that you just ran into someone from your past on a street somewhere, or on a train, or found yourself leaning against the same bar one night. It might be a phone call out of the blue.

  Or it might all come about same as this had: it might all start with a letter…

  It was weird, that was the other thing, how some that you’d never really been close to might turn out, a few years down the line, to be all right. To be the ones you got on okay with. While others-the blokes who you thought at the time would be your mates forever; who you said stupid, soppy shit to after a few beers; who you felt really connected to-ended up being the ones who caused all the fucking headaches later on. And, of course, sod’s law, you could never tell first time round which were which.

  Time could heal some wounds, ’course it could, but others were always going to fester.

  He reckoned that basically, there was always a good reason why people lost touch with one another. Sometimes it was an effort to keep a friendship going; when geography was against you or whatever. If the friendship was really worth it, though, you made the effort. Simple as that. If not, you let it go, and like as not the other person was thinking the same as you, and letting it go at exactly the same time.

  If an effort was made later to get back in touch, there was a good chance that the party making the effort wanted something. It was certainly true in this case. Very bloody true all round, in fact. But, a decade and more down the road, you want different things, don’t you? You want a quiet life and you’ll do all sorts of things to keep it that way. You’re willing-no, you’re happy -to fight for what you’ve got; to keep hold of what you’ve worked so bloody hard to get.

  They all needed one another back then. No shame in that. But life goes on, and people learn lessons, and you didn’t need to be a rocket scientist, did you? When there isn’t a real enemy around anymore, you don’t need friends quite so much.

  1991

  There are no longer any weapons trained upon the four men who have been tied up, and though those who have bound their wrists, and now their feet, are no more than fifty feet away, each allows his gaze, for at least some of the time, to drift toward the floor or to the face of the man nearest to him. The eyes of these men are no longer fixed and popping, as they would be faced with the muzzle of a gun or the blade of a knife.

  The sand has become the color of soil, and their olive shirts are black with the rain and pasted to their skins.

  The four figures wearing goggles and helmets are also sitting now, or squatting, close together. Each still carries his gun, but it leans against a thigh or hangs loosely from a hand resting across a knee. Though their position might seem relaxed from a distance, they constantly eye the quartet across from them, and shift nervously. Heavily booted feet are flexed, carving out miniature trenches in the sand, and those on their haunches bob and bend, their arms stretched and stiff against the ground to steady themselves.

  Suddenly one man lowers his shamag and spits, a thick trail of it that he pulls away from his chin before lifting the kerchief back into place. He shuffles forward and the others do likewise; they lean close together and talk.

  They each have something to say, and though the exchange is heated at first, it settles quickly and the voices gradually lower. The words are getting harder to make out, but they are clearly given greater weight and seriousness, and now the men are close enough to touch one another. It starts with a slap that sounds like a bone breaking and a voice that has become little more than a low growl. Pleas give way to threats. Then promises. One man swears, pushes at a second, and finds himself clutched at like a lover. Heads are shaken quickly and nodded slowly until, finally, each man has a handful of another’s jacket or an arm wrapped tight around his shoulder, and they bow their heads so that the helmets smack together. They look like football players in a huddle, desperate to pool their terror and their aggression and turn it into something they can use. Firing up for one last, big push.

  And this is when it begins to look like a game. They all rise to their feet, and after another half minute, one-chosen or volunteered-steps away from the group. He examines his pistol. In the space that opens up between, there is a bright smear on the horizon, fainter as it rises, like red ink creeping up a blotter.

  The others watch as the man walks quickly toward the four figures on the ground, though two of those watching turn away at the last moment. They look like players gathered in the center circle. Some unable to handle the tension of the penalty shootout; turning their backs, lowering their heads. Afraid to watch.

  The men on the ground begin to move, quickly. They attempt to scramble
to their feet, but it’s hopeless. They fall onto their backs or faces, and struggle to reach one another. Now their eyes are popping again; wide, and shot with shattered vessels.

  Time passes, though probably no more than half a minute, and the man who left the group is on his way back to them.

  There’s no way of knowing, of course, what any of them are thinking; those that stand waiting their turn, or the man who trudges slowly back. But though the goggles and shamags give them all the same blank, robotic expression, it’s easy to imagine that the faces beneath are equally expressionless.

  He rejoins his friends in their center circle.

  Though three men have begun to scream, and weep, and pray, it’s impossible to tell if he’s scored or not.

  FIFTEEN

  The Media Operations Office of British Army HQ (London District) was housed in a building backing onto Horse Guards Parade. It had once been the barracks for hundreds of men, but these days the horses it stabled and the troops who paraded across its courtyards were engaged, for the most part, in ceremonial activities.

  As Kitson and Holland had walked toward the reception area, they’d had to pass a pair of House hold Cavalrymen on guard duty. The soldiers stood, unblinking in their scarlet tunics, with helmets polished to a mirrored finish, and Holland had only just fought off the childish urge to try to distract them, in the same way that giggling tourists and schoolchildren did all day long. Once inside the office, with a china cup of very strong tea, he confessed this to one of the senior public information officers sitting behind the desk opposite.