He stared out of the café window and watched the cars drift by. He thought about his family. The dead and the disappeared.
Bumming around…
That’s what he’d told those fuckers when they’d asked what he was doing back when it had happened, and it was pretty much all he’d done since as well. Holding down a job, once he’d got back into the swing of things, had become difficult. He’d developed a tendency to take things the wrong way, to react badly to a tasteless comment or a funny look. He couldn’t say for sure that what had happened was responsible. He might always have been destined to be a shiftless loser with a tendency toward casual violence, but what the fuck, it was comforting to have something to blame.
To have somebody to blame.
He should have moved away from the area. There was always some old dear with an opinion, or a pair of young mums whispering and shielding their children. Always some interfering fucker, willing to tell any woman he got close to all about his happy family. People had good memories. Not as good as his, though…
He remembered the argument he’d had with Den a couple of days before it had happened. He’d wanted to come over, had asked Den why nobody had seen Jane for a while, if everything was all right. Den had lost it and told him to mind his own business, said that he knew very well what was going on. He remembered his brother’s face, the trembling around the mouth as he’d accused him of fancying Jane, all but suggesting they’d been screwing behind his back. He remembered the guilt he’d felt, then and afterward, because he did fancy Jane and always had.
And he remembered the faces of the children, the last time he’d seen them, before that cow from the social services had driven them away. Sarah had been quiet, she’d probably not really understood what was going on, but the boy’s face, Mark’s face, pressed against the back window of that car, had been streaked with snot and tears.
He slid out of the booth, grabbed his paper, and strolled across to the counter to pay for his lunch.
He thought about his nephew and his niece and hoped that they were together somewhere a long way away. A place where nobody could ever find them and fuck their new lives up.
The afternoon stretched ahead. He would go back and lie down and wait for it to get dark. Then he would put some metal on and drink. He would empty can after can, until the noise inside his head was quieter than the screech and the smash of the music that would be filling his bedroom.
When they got back to Becke House, Thorne filled Kitson and Brigstocke in on how things had gone in Colchester. They conferred about progress on the other flank of the operation. The Southern killing had plenty in common with those that had gone before: the cause of death; the layout of the murder scene; the wreath ordered in person from an out-of-hours floristry service—this time delivered as far as the hotel-room doorway, then hurriedly dropped after one look at the state of its recipient.
But there were plenty of differences, too. There were new avenues that had to be explored…
Southern had been released from prison more than ten years previously. He hadn’t been selected in the same way as the previous victims, and he was certainly approached differently. Unlike Remfry or Welch, he had a whole life that had to be sifted through if they were going to find out just how the killer had made himself part of it. Interviews, running into many hundreds, were still being conducted with anyone who had contact with Southern: the people he worked with; the friends he drank with; the members of the gym he worked out at; the girlfriend he’d recently broken up with…
These people who had been part of his new life would, for the most part, have had no idea that Howard Southern had once served time in prison. Even if he’d told any of them—and with some people it might have gained him kudos or a round of drinks—chances are he wouldn’t have told them what for.
Unfortunately for him, someone had found out exactly what Howard Southern had once done, and had killed him for it.
In his office, Thorne went through his mail. As always, it was mostly junk. Pointless memos, press releases, crime statistics, new initiative outlines. He glanced through the monthly Police Federation newsletter, at a story about a local force recording themselves whistling the theme tunes to a host of well-known police TV shows. These recordings were being broadcast in some of the rougher housing developments and shopping centers in an effort to deter street criminals.
When Thorne had finished laughing, he checked his messages. There’d already been a call from Joanne Lesser to say that she’d start checking the records the following morning, and that some files had apparently been moved from County Hall to a new storage facility on an industrial estate just outside Chelmsford. The next one was from Chris Barratt at Kentish Town. There was nothing from Eve…
Thorne picked up the phone, wondering at the sharp twinge of disappointment he felt. He marveled, as he dialed, at his seemingly endless capacity for indecision, for fucking off…
“About bloody time, too,” he said.
“Calm down,” Barratt said. “We haven’t got him yet. But we know exactly who he is. We’ll pull him first thing tomorrow morning.”
“How did you find him?”
“Are you listening? This is funny as fuck…”
“Go on…”
“He’d got rid of the stereo, right? Probably sold it the same day, got himself blitzed on the proceeds. Then he has a problem…”
“Which is?”
“Your taste in music.”
“Eh?”
“The idiot’s had to make himself a bit conspicuous in the end. We got the nod eventually because by all accounts he’s spent the last four weeks trying to get rid of your bloody CD collection.”
“What?” Thorne’s relief was all but canceled out by his outrage…
By now, Barratt was making no attempt to hide his enjoyment. “Couldn’t pay anybody to take ’em off his hands, by all accounts. Been dragging them round every market and secondhand place in London…”
“Enjoy yourself, Chris. As long as I get them all back.”
“Listen, if I was you, when you do get them back, why don’t you stick a few by the window, where people can see them. You know, as a deterrent…”
“I’m not listening. Just call me when you’ve arrested him, all right?”
“Fine…”
“And I’ll want five minutes.”
“No problem. I’m here all day…”
“Not with you, smart-arse. With him…”
TWENTY
He’d seen comedians on TV talking about how women could hold a hundred thoughts in their heads at one time and juggle an assortment of tasks, while men were incapable of doing even two things at once. Masturbating and maneuvering a mouse was about as much as a man could manage.
Even though he knew it was nonsense, he still found the joke funny. Even as he sat working and planning the next killing…
Multitasking was something of a specialty, had to be, and even though the slightly more socially unacceptable stuff he did was the more exciting, he actually enjoyed the day job, too. He took pride in what he did. Of course he couldn’t have done the other things without it.
The next killing…
He didn’t know for certain yet if the next would also be the last, but in a lot of ways it made sense. It would round things off very nicely. This one would be different in many ways, of course, more symbolic than the others, but certainly no less enjoyable for it.
A date had yet to be set, but that was the final detail. The victim had been selected weeks ago. In fact, he’d pretty much selected himself.
Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time…
Thorne thought about the Restorative Justice Conference he’d sat through weeks earlier. He remembered Darren Ellis and the squeak of his shiny white training shoes. He pictured the face of the old man who’d been sitting more or less where he was now…
Opposite him, in the Interview Room at Kentish Town station, sat a boy who Thorne knew to be seventeen,
but apart from the unexcited eyes, the rest of him might have belonged to any skinny fourteen-year-old. Noel Mullen had been stealing cars to order while others his age had been pinching chocolate bars from the nearest sweets shop. By the time his contemporaries were sneaking into pubs and feeling up girls, Noel had already acquired a decent-size drug habit and a growing reputation with the police in Northwest London. There was a room that should have had his name on the door, in the young offenders’ institute that at one time had welcomed both his elder brothers.
He still looked as if his mum should be washing his underpants and pouring the milk on his Rice Krispies…
“Why did you shit in my bed?” Thorne said.
The boy did a pretty good job of looking unutterably bored, but there was a jerkiness to the seemingly casual roll of the head, a tremor at the ends of the fingers. Thorne wondered how long it had been since he’d had a fix. Maybe not since he’d failed to sell Thorne’s CDs, to turn Cash into cash and score with it…
“Come on, Noel…”
“What’s the fucking point? You going to put in a good word for me, are you? Speak up for me in court?”
“No chance.”
“So why should I bother talking to you?”
Thorne leaned back and folded his arms. “Listen, break into places, Noel, by all means. It’s your job, after all. Break in and trash them a bit if you have to, while you’re looking for the decent stuff, the gear that’s going to score you the best deal. I can understand that, I really can.
“Not just the posh places, either. Don’t just do the rich bastards who you might, might have a legitimate reason to enjoy turning over. No, why not rob from your own? Dump on your doorstep. Do the ordinary working idiots who live in your own neighborhood, on the putrid estate that you’ve already done your best to make that little bit worse than it would have been anyway, by pissing in the lift and leaving dirty needles all over what passes for a playground. Smash your neighbor’s door in and see how high a black-and-white TV can get you. Or some cheap jewelry. Fuck it, any good stuff, the widescreens and the DVDs, will have been rented anyway, so who cares? Stupid fuckers aren’t insured, that’s not your fault, is it…?”
“Jesus, have you finished?”
“Do it and feel nothing. See something and take it, because all that matters is what you might be able to get for it. Feel fuck all…”
“You’re wasting your—”
“Feel fuck all. Then see how you feel when one day one of your mates needs some cash and puts his foot through your mother’s window. Size-nine Nikes tramping around your mum’s living room and going through her drawers. And maybe your mate’s a little bit wired, a little bit over the edge, and maybe your mother’s lying there in bed at the time—”
“It’s because you’re a copper.”
Thorne stopped, took a breath, and waited.
“That’s why I took a shit on your bed, all right?”
It made sense. Thorne wasn’t so poor a detective that he hadn’t considered the possibility that his flat had been targeted. That was the problem with Neighborhood Watch. You didn’t always know which neighbors were watching…
“How did you know?” Thorne asked.
“I didn’t, not before I got in there. There was a photo that had fallen down behind one of your speakers. You in your fucking uniform…”
Mullen leaned back and folded his arms as Thorne had done. He looked at him as he might look at a stereo or a VCR, evaluating it, working out whether it was worth taking.
“Your hair was darker then,” Mullen said. “And you weren’t such a fat cunt.”
Thorne nodded. He remembered the photo, had wondered where it had gone. It wasn’t a picture he was hugely fond of, but still, Mullen’s response when he’d seen it a few weeks earlier had been a bit harsh.
“So you take one look at an old photo and decide to use my bed as a crapper, that about right?”
Mullen grinned, starting to enjoy himself. His teeth were browning where they met the gums. “Yeah, more or less…”
“You cocky little strip of piss…”
Thorne’s movement, and the scrape of his chair across the floor, caused Mullen to jerk back and stiffen, momentarily defensive. He appeared to recover his confidence just as quickly.
“Look, it was nothing personal.”
“And it won’t be personal when I come round there, knock you over, and shit in your mouth, fair enough? I’m a copper and you’re a burglar. Right, Noel? Clearly there’s certain things we have to do…”
Mullen’s expression was closer to pity than boredom. “You’re not going to do anything.”
Other than strike a few poses to try to make himself feel better, there was nothing that Thorne could do. He wondered if the old man he’d seen sitting opposite Darren Ellis had felt as useless.
“Are you sorry, Noel?”
“Am I what?”
“Sorry. Are you sorry?”
“Yeah. I’m sorry I got fucking caught.”
Thorne’s smile was genuine. A certain warped faith had been restored by Mullen’s honesty. Perhaps, faced with a few years’ hard time, he would learn a trick or two, learn how to turn it on in the same way that Darren Ellis had. For now, there was something heartening about Mullen’s answer. Something reassuring about the fact that he really and truly didn’t give a damn.
There was a moment when Thorne almost liked him.
The moment passed, and for a minute and more, Thorne stared into Mullen’s unexcited eyes until the boy jumped up, moved quickly across the room, and began banging on the door.
Stone took the call, held the receiver out toward Holland. “For you…”
As Holland walked across their small office, Stone put his hand over the receiver. “She sounds sexy as well.”
Holland said nothing and took the phone. He’d pretty much learned to put up with Stone’s arrogance, but he still got impatient with the smirks and the shrugs and the knowing looks that actually knew fuck all.
Mind you, these days he got impatient with a lot of things.
“DC Holland.”
“This is Joanne Lesser…”
“Oh, hello, Joanne.” Holland looked up to see Stone rolling his eyes and mouthing her name. Holland casually stuck up a finger.
“No luck on the actual files yet,” she said. “I did leave a message yesterday. About some of them being moved?”
“Okay. I didn’t see that, but—”
“Don’t worry, I’m still working on it. I found out something else, though.”
“Right…” Holland picked up a pen, began to doodle as he listened.
“A colleague on the team here reckons that the old index cards, from years back, are all piled up down in our cellar. I’ll try and dig them out, presuming they haven’t all gone rotten…”
“Do you think the cards for Mark and Sarah Foley will be down there?”
“That’s why I rang. I don’t see why not. There’s probably not much information, they’re just small cards, you know? The proper files are probably six inches thick…”
“What’s on them?” Holland glanced up to see Stone staring across at him, interested.
“Usually just the basic stuff,” Lesser said. “Case number, DOBs, placement dates, and names of carers…”
Holland stopped doodling, wrote down names & dates. “That sounds great, Joanne. Really helpful…”
“I’ll call you when I’ve got the information then, shall I?”
“Can you e-mail it? Probably safer…”
When he thanked her again for her trouble, he could almost hear the blushing.
“Sounded good,” Stone said after Holland had hung up.
“Reckons she can get us a list of all the kids’ foster parents,” Holland explained. “The dates they were placed in care…”
Stone looked thoughtful. “Is she going to carry on looking for the full files?”
“Probably no stopping her, but I reckon these names and dates are as
much as we’re going to need.”
“Let me know when you get them,” Stone said. “I’ll give you a hand on it.”
Holland leaned back, stretched. “Shouldn’t be much to do. I think I can manage it on my own…”
“Please yourself.” Stone looked back to his computer screen, began to type.
Holland knew that it had been a fairly petty moment of self-assertion. More so, considering that he didn’t really consider it to be a worthwhile line of inquiry in the first place. Thorne had got a bee in his bonnet about it, so Holland would do what needed doing, but he couldn’t help thinking that they were almost certainly wasting their time.
He didn’t see how knowing where Mark and Sarah Foley had been twenty-five years ago was going to help them find out where they were now.
Thorne stepped out of the tube station onto Kentish Town Road. He turned for home, walking down in the direction of Camden, and the police station in which he’d encountered Noel Mullen nearly twelve hours before.
He thought about what the boy had said…
I’m sorry I got fucking caught.…and wondered if he’d ever make the killer of Remfry, Welch, Southern, and Charlie Dodd sorry. He had a feeling that if he did catch him, it would be just about the only thing the killer would be sorry about.
Thorne was vacillating, standing on the pavement outside the Bengal Lancer, when his phone beeped. He listened to the message, then pressed the button to call Eve straight back.
The apology wasn’t the first thing he said, but it was pretty close.
“I’m sorry…”
“For what?”
“Lots of things. Not calling, for starters.”
“I know you’ve been busy.”
The owner of the restaurant, a man who knew Thorne very well, saw him through the window. He started waving, beckoning him inside. Thorne waved back, mouthing and pointing at the phone.
Lazybones Page 26
