Lifeless tt-5

by Mark Billingham

  After a few seconds we hear the voice from close by. Shouted this time. The words are just discernible above the relentless pop and spatter of the rain: “Put your arms around them… Give the fuckers a cuddle.”

  Two of the soldiers do as they’ve been told. They lean forward and each throws an arm around the shoulder of a corpse. The other two soldiers remain still, with their heads lowered.

  “I can’t see faces… Lift their heads up.”

  One of the soldiers is down on his haunches between two bodies, an arm now around each one. He looks across to one of those who has not moved. “A bit late to pussy out now.”

  After a few moments, the soldier who has been challenged stoops to grab the hair of the dead man and pull back his head. Close up, we see that the corpse’s eyes are half-closed and the jaw is hanging slack. Rain pours into the open mouth, spills from the side.

  “Uh-oh… losing one…”

  The body on the far right starts to tip to one side and slowly fall. The soldier behind, who has still not joined in, half reaches out a hand, then pulls it away at the last moment and allows the dead man to drop to the ground.

  “For fuck’s sake…”

  It isn’t clear at first. The rain and the shadows, the dark sand and hair make it hard to distinguish. Then, on the body of the fallen man, we see the patch that is wetter, blacker; high on the side of the head, and just starting to spread an inch or two across the sand.

  “Watch…”

  A soldier has pressed his face against that of a dead man. He raises a hand and wraps it around the neck. He swivels the head around, one way and then another.

  “Gottle of geer, gottle… geer…”

  His friend laughs, pulling off a glove. He leans across and presses a finger to the back of the corpse’s head. He looks at the stained fingertip, rubs it against his thumb for a second or two, then dabs it against the dead man’s forehead.

  A small red spot that starts to run.

  “That’s better. Want to make sure they let him into heaven.”

  The soldier who’d let the body drop stands suddenly and reaches over. He grabs the soldier who is still putting his glove back on and drags him to his feet. Screams into his face.

  “That’s Hindus, you ignorant prick. Not Muslims.”

  “All right…”

  “Not fucking Muslims!” He pushes him away and the two soldiers stand and look at each other. The horizon is a glowing strip behind them.

  Then, the camera drifts away, and down.

  And white noise…

  SEVENTEEN

  Holland jabbed at the remote and stopped the tape. After something close to half a minute, during which nobody spoke, Holland got up and moved across to the television. He crouched down by the

  VCR and ejected the cassette.

  Brigstocke turned to the man sitting next to him.

  “What d’you reckon?”

  “I reckon it’s something worth killing for,” Thorne said. “Worth killing to keep hidden.”

  “It’s fucking horrible.” Holland stuffed the cassette back into a large Jiffy bag and sat down again.

  “That’s the fourth time I’ve seen it and I’m still glad

  I haven’t eaten anything today.”

  The three of them were sitting in beige armchairs, gathered around a coffee table in the TV room at the

  London Lift. Though he’d moaned initially, complaining that he’d be in the shit if Lawrence Healey ever found out, Brendan Maxwell had eventually agreed to open the place up for them out of hours. It was just after seven on a Thursday night. Nearly thirty-six hours since Susan Jago had handed over the videotape.

  “What about the sound?” Thorne asked. “You can’t make out a lot of what’s being said. One voice is completely distorted early on, when they’re doing that shit with the bacon.”

  Holland grimaced. “That’s really hideous…” “We’re sending it to the lab at Newlands Park,”

  Brigstocke said. “Having heard some of the things they’ve done with 999 recordings, I reckon they can enhance the dialogue for us. We might find out what everyone was saying.”

  “So what do we know?” Thorne asked.

  Holland took out a notebook, though he didn’t really need it. “It’s the first Gulf War. Chris Jago was posted there from Bremenhaven in northern Germany in October 1990. The date on the tape tells us that what we saw took place on February 26, 1991.

  As to exactly where-”

  “I’m not sure it really matters,” Brigstocke said. Thorne scratched at what had become a pretty decent beard. “What does Susan Jago say?” “She says her brother didn’t want to go along with any of it,” Holland said. “She says that he was the one at the end doing the shouting.”

  “Of course she does.”

  “It’s impossible to tell who’s who, so I doubt we’ll ever know.”

  “Like I said before, I’m not sure it really matters,”

  Brigstocke said.

  Thorne shook his head, let it drop back against his chair. “Nobody tried very hard to stop it. They were all involved on some level.”

  “We do know one of the others is our mystery man in Westminster Morgue.” Holland picked up his briefcase and took out a grainy ten-by-eight photograph: a still from the video showing the four British soldiers; the moment before one of them moved forward from the group and checked his gun; just before the killing began. Holland laid the photo on the table, tapped at it with a fingernail. “With a bit of luck, we’ll have names for all of them by this time tomorrow.” Brigstocke looked at Thorne. “Holland and Kitson are going to pay the Twelfth King’s Hussars a visit tomorrow.”

  “You’re going to Germany?” Thorne asked. Holland’s expression soured. “Bloody regiment got shifted back here five years ago, didn’t it? They’re based near Taunton now, so I get to go to Somerset instead. Shame. I could have done with a new overcoat.” Officers were given allowances of a few hundred pounds, usually in Marks amp; Spencer vouchers, if they were traveling to countries that would be warmer, or in this case cooler than they might be used to…

  “Nice to see you’ve still got your priorities sorted,

  Dave,” Thorne said.

  Holland stood and walked toward a varnishedpine bookcase in the corner. He laid a hand on top of the Jiffy bag as he passed the table. “God knows what they’re going to make of that, mind you.” He sank down to his haunches in front of the bookcase and peered through the locked glass doors at the rows of videotapes and DVDs inside.

  “It’s going to be interesting, all right,” Thorne said.

  “That’s one word for it.”

  “How are you going to play it?” Thorne looked across at Brigstocke and received a small shake of the head in return.

  “You’ve got some good stuff in here,” Holland said. “All the Scream movies. A lot of Jim Carrey stuff…”

  Thorne pointed to the Jiffy bag. “I think I’d rather watch that again.”

  They all laughed, but nobody’s heart was really in it. Least of all Thorne’s.

  “Why don’t you find us a caff, Dave?” Brigstocke said. “Bring us some teas back.”

  Thorne had eaten no more than Holland, but for different reasons. Now he wanted a variety of cakes and sandwiches with his tea, and in the end Holland had to write it all down. When he’d gone, Thorne turned to Brigstocke. “What was all that about?” He mimicked the strange shaking of the head that had gone on just before.

  “I need to get this rubber-stamped by Jesmond first thing in the morning,” he said. “He’s gone higher up, but for what it’s worth, I’ve told him I don’t think we should tell the army about the video just yet.” Thorne considered this for a moment or two. “It makes sense.”

  Brigstocke looked relieved that Thorne was agreeing with him, but explained himself anyway. “What’s on this tape is a bloody big deal, and once the army gets hold of it, they might well think they’ve got better things to worry about than a few murders.” “You
’re worried they’ll try and find some way to cover it up?”

  Brigstocke looked worried about something, certainly. “I don’t know. Look, when our case is put to bed they can do what they want with it and I’ll be happy to cooperate in any way I can. Right now, though, that tape’s just evidence in my murder investigation, and I need their help.” He looked down at the photograph on the table. “I need the names of those men, and if the army knows about this tape,

  I’m not sure we’ll get given them very quickly. See what I’m saying?”

  “Like I said, it makes sense.”

  “It does, doesn’t it?”

  It was obvious that Brigstocke was still nervous about having made such a potentially dangerous decision. He needed reassurance, and Thorne could understand why he’d sent Holland out before he’d gone looking for it. Thorne wanted to tell him that he was handling the situation well, that he was making a good job of a miserable case. He wanted to tell him that he wasn’t the only one in the room who needed reassurance. The moment came and went… “Jesmond might well bottle it,” Brigstocke said.

  “If he orders us to hand the tape over, we’ll hand it over and see what happens. The Met’s worked well enough with the RMP when we’ve had to. It’ll probably be fine.. .”

  “Or it’ll be like we never had the tape in the first place.”

  “We’ll see…”

  “What about the sister?” Thorne asked. “She’s back home, but we got pretty heavy with her. She thinks there’s a charge of conspiracy to pervert hanging over her.”

  “Is there?”

  “We’ll let the CPS decide. It’ll be a difficult one to call, because she never actually did anything. She was lying to protect a dead man.”

  Thorne had never met Susan Jago. He imagined her as hard-faced and cunning. He pictured thin lips and dead eyes; features she’d have shared with one of the men behind goggles and a colored kerchief. A man who’d tied up prisoners and executed them.

  “She didn’t know he was dead when she lied, though, did she?”

  The two of them sat back in their chairs, waiting for Holland to return with the food and hot drinks. “It’s just such a fucking relief,” Brigstocke said.

  “To have a motive. It’s got to be blackmail, agreed?” Thorne nodded. “It’s the only thing that explains why it’s happening now.” It was the obvious conclusion. Someone was willing to kill to prevent this tape getting out. A threat had been made to expose what had happened fifteen years before, and whoever had been threatened had reacted violently. Thorne looked at the picture of the four soldiers. Whoever was doing the blackmailing, the killer had decided to take no chances…

  Brigstocke sat up, leaned down to study the photograph alongside Thorne. The conditions when the picture was taken, alongside that of the broken-down image itself, had combined to give it the strange quality of a double exposure. The figures, dark green against gray, seemed incomplete, almost spectral.

  Brigstocke traced a finger along the row of soldiers.

  “We know two of those four are dead, right? If the other two are still alive, we need to find them.” “Especially if one of them’s the killer,” Thorne said. “I don’t think it’s very likely.” Brigstocke sat forward. “A blackmailer’s going to target someone with money. Someone who’s done pretty well for himself.

  Right? Based on what we know so far, that doesn’t sound like your average ex-squaddie…”

  Thorne had to agree that it made good sense. He thought about the voice on the tape, distorted on occasion, and too close to the mike. The voice that had seemed to be giving the orders. “Well, that only leaves one option,” he said, nodding toward the blank screen. “We’re looking for whoever was behind the camera.”

  By the time they’d finished at the Lift and Thorne had gone on his way, Holland and Brigstocke were off duty for the night. Brigstocke had gone straight home, and Holland knew that he should really do the same. Instead, he’d called the office to see who might still be around, and, finding that Yvonne Kitson had not yet left, had arranged to meet her for a drink. He’d jumped on the tube and headed all the way back north to Colindale, to meet the DI in the Royal Oak.

  Inside half an hour they’d put away a couple each and begun to loosen up a little.

  “Where are the kids tonight…?” As Holland was asking the question he realized he was unsure what he should call Kitson. He couldn’t remember having a drink with her on her own before, and something about it-and perhaps about the fact that they were drinking so fast-seemed to alter the dynamic between them.

  “Tony’s got them. He picks them up from the child minder if I’m on a late one.”

  “Right.” Holland hadn’t heard Kitson mention her new bloke’s name before.

  “And ‘Yvonne’s’ fine, by the way,” she said. “I think we’re off the clock in here.”

  They took sips of white wine and lager top and looked around at the pub’s brightly lit and unwelcoming interior. The place had no frills, but was still very busy. As it happened, being very much the local for the Peel Centre, there were usually just as many coppers in the place as were to be found up the road in Becke House.

  “What about you, Dave? You were somewhere near Leicester Square, weren’t you?”

  “That’s right.” Kitson still had no idea that Thorne had gone undercover, and so obviously had not been informed that Holland and Brigstocke had gone into the West End to meet up with him and show him the tape. “Some old boy told one of the local lads he’d seen something on the night of the last murder. Waste of bloody time…”

  “That’s only a few stops from Elephant and Castle, isn’t it? You could have been home in quarter of an hour.”

  A copper, whose face he’d seen before in the pub and at various times around Becke House, came to the table and asked Holland if the empty chair opposite him was taken. Holland shook his head, watched the man take the chair across and join a group who looked like they were settling down to make a night of it. He turned back to Kitson. “It’s not fair on Sophie. I’m bringing such a lot of shit home with me at the moment, you know? Like I’m walking it through the flat and getting it everywhere. Dirtying everything…”

  “Is this about the tape?”

  “It’s mad, I know. We see loads of horrible stuff, right? It’s just seeing it happen like that. Watching them do it.”

  “It’s how you’re meant to feel, Dave. You should be worried if you didn’t.”

  “This is going to sound stupid, but I don’t want to pass any of it on to Chloe. I have to deal with it, but there’s no reason why she should, is there? It’s like passive smoking or something. I don’t want her anywhere near anything that might affect her, and right now it’s like I’m choking on it. I feel like I’m carrying it around on my clothes and in my hair. Passive evil…”

  Kitson smiled as she raised her glass to her lips.

  “Told you it was stupid,” Holland said.

  Kitson shook her head. “It’s not that,” she said. “I curse my three sometimes, but perhaps I should be grateful I’ve got so much chasing round to do. I’m too busy sorting out football kit, and nagging them about homework, and running a taxi service, to worry about bringing work home with me.”

  “Maybe me and Sophie should have a few more kids,” Holland said.

  Kitson drained her wineglass. “My shout…”

  While Kitson was at the bar, Holland thought about the way Susan Jago had fought to protect her brother; to defend him, even in the face of the sickening evidence. He wondered what Jago’s mother would think about what her son had done. He’d confronted the parents of those who had committed the most shocking acts and knew that in most cases they never stopped loving their children. They couldn’t, any more than he could conceive of not feeling as he did now about his daughter, no matter what she did. For the families-especially the parents-of those who killed or abused, faith could be destroyed. But love, he knew now, was unconditional. When your children did such thin
gs, you did not stop loving them. You simply began hating yourself.

  Kitson was coming back to the table with the drinks and she smiled as he caught her eye. Holland thought suddenly that she looked quite sexy. Asked himself what the hell he was thinking about…

  “What were you doing,” Kitson asked sometime later, “in 1991?”

  Holland did the math. “I was sixteen, so I suppose I was going out a lot. I can remember coming back late from parties or clubs a couple of times and sitting up watching the bombing on TV. What about you?”

  “I was just finishing college,” Kitson said. “We were all dead against it, obviously. Not as much as with the last one, but there were still plenty of protests. We thought it was all about oil.”

  A cheer went up as someone hit the jackpot on the fruit machine in the corner. Holland leaned forward, spoke up to make himself heard above the rhythmic chink and clatter of the payout. “It doesn’t matter whether you’re a copper or a killer, does it?” He swallowed a mouthful of beer. “How well do we really know anybody?”

  Kitson raised her eyebrows. “Bloody hell…”

  Holland reddened slightly. He hadn’t meant it to sound so stupidly portentous. “I never had you down as a lefty, that’s all,” he said.

  “Watford Polytechnic was hardly Kent State.”

  Holland laughed, though he didn’t understand the reference. “Even so…”

  “And I never had you down as someone who takes such a lot of the job home with him.” She smiled, nodding toward Holland’s glass. “Speaking of which…”

  “What?”

  “If you do want to have any more kids, you’d best finish that, go home, and get down to it…”

  “You look wankered, mate,” Spike said.

  Thorne grinned and swayed to one side, waving a young woman past as if he were a bullfighter. “I feel wankered,” he said. “Bladdered, fucked, off my tits…”

  “How many of those have you had?”