Sleepyhead tt-1

by Mark Billingham

  'Are we looking at a doctor?'

  As soon as he had asked the question, Thorne knew what Holland would be thinking. It was undeniable that Anne Coburn was the sort of doctor most men would look at. About whom most men would contrive painful jokes about cold hands and bedside manners. She was tall and slim. Elegant, he thought, like that actress who was in The Avengers and plays the old slapper in that sitcom. Thorne put her in her early forties, maybe a year or two older than he was. Although the blue eyes suggested that her hair might once have been blonde, he liked it the way it was now – short and silver. Perched on the edge of a small, cluttered desk, drinking a cup of coffee, she seemed almost relaxed. By comparison with the day before at any rate.

  She'd sent him away from the Royal Free with a flea in his ear. Thorne could still hear the laughter of thirty-odd medical students as he'd trudged away up the corridor. It was evidently a treat to take a short break from brain scans to watch the teacher give a high-ranking police officer a thorough bollocking. Anne Coburn did not like to be interrupted. She'd apologised for the incident over the phone when Thorne rang to rearrange their appointment back at Queen Square where she worked. Where she treated Alison Willetts.

  She took another swig of coffee and repeated Thorne's question. Her speech was crisp, efficient and easy on the ear. It was a voice that could certainly wow impressionable medical students or frighten middle-aged policemen. 'Are we looking at a doctor? Well, certainly someone with a degree of medical expertise. To block off the basilar artery and cause a stroke would take medical know-how. To cause the kind of stroke that would induce locked-in syndrome is way beyond that… Even if someone knew what they were doing, the odds are against it. You might try it a dozen times and not succeed. We're talking about fractions of an inch.'

  Those fractions had cost three women their lives. Thorne flashed on a mental image of Alison Willetts. Make that four women. Perhaps they should count their blessings and thank God for this lunatic's expertise. Or, more likely, worry that now he thought he'd perfected his technique he'd be eager to try again. Dr Coburn hadn't finished.

  'Plus of course, there's the journey to consider.'

  Thorne nodded. He'd already started to consider it. Holland looked confused.

  'From what I can gather, you're presuming that Alison had her stroke at home in south-east London,' said Coburn. 'He would have had to. keep her alive until he could get her to the Royal London, which is at least…'

  'Five miles away.'

  'Right. He'd have passed any number of hospitals on the way. Why did he drive all the way to the Royal London?'

  Thorne had no idea, but he'd done some checking.

  'Camberwell to Whitechapel, he'd have passed three major hospitals, even on the most direct route. How would he have kept her alive?'

  'Bag and mask's the most obvious way. He might have had to pull over every ten minutes or so for half a dozen good squeezes on the bag but it's fairly straightforward.'

  'So, a doctor, then?'

  'I think so, yes. A failed medical student possibly – chiropractor, perhaps.., a well-read physiotherapist at a hell of a stretch. I've no idea where you'd even begin.'

  Holland stopped scribbling in his notebook. 'A hypodermic needle in a haystack?'

  Coburn's expression told Thorne that she'd found it about as funny as he had.

  'You'd better start looking for it then, Holland,' Thorne told him. 'I'll see you tomorrow. Get a cab back.'

  Every step that he and Dr Coburn took towards Alison's room filled Thorne with something approaching dread. It was a terrible thought but he would have found it easier had Alison been one of Hendricks's 'patients'. He couldn't help but wonder if it might not have been easier for Alison too. They walked through to the Chandler Wing then took the lift to the second floor and Medical ITU.

  'You don't like hospitals, do you, Detective Inspector?'

  An odd question. Thorne couldn't believe that anybody liked hospitals. 'I've spent too much time in them.'

  'Professionally or…?' She didn't finish the question because she couldn't. What were the right words? 'On an amateur basis?'

  Thorne looked straight at her. 'I had a small operation last year.' But that wasn't it. 'And my mother was in hospital a long time before she died.'

  Coburn nodded. 'Stroke.'

  'Three of them. Eighteen months ago. You really do know how brains work, don't you?'

  She smiled. He smiled back. They stepped out of the lift.

  'By the way, it was a hernia.'

  The signs on the wails fascinated Thorne: Movement and Balance; Senility; Dementia. There was even a Headache Clinic. The place was busy but the people they passed as they moved through the building were not the usual walking wounded. He saw no blood, no bandages or plaster casts. The corridors and waiting areas seemed full of people moving slowly and deliberately. They looked lost or bewildered. Thorne wondered what he looked like to them. Much the same, almost certainly.

  They walked on in silence past a canteen filled with the casual chatter that Thorne would have associated with a large factory or office building. He wondered if they ever got that smell out of the food.

  'What about doctors? Are we on your shit list?'

  For a ridiculous second he wondered if she was coming on to him. Then he remembered the faces of those bloody medical students. This was not a woman about whom he could presume anything. 'Well, not at the moment an3weay. Too many of them responsible for putting us on to this. You for a start.'

  'I think my husband can take credit for that.' Her tone was brisk, without an ounce of false modesty. She caught Thorne's fleeting glance towards where a wedding ring should have been. 'Soon to be ex-husband, I should say. It was a chance remark, really. One of the more civilised moments in a rather bloody how-shall-we-handle-the-divorce session.'

  Thorne looked straight ahead, saying nothing. Christ, he was so English!

  'What about the china? Who keeps the cat? Did you hear about the lunatic who's stroking out women all over London? You know the sort of thing…'

  Phobia. Death. Divorce. Thorne wondered if perhaps they should move on to the crisis in the Middle East.

  'Forty-eight hours after she was brought in we gave Alison an MRI scan. There was edema around the neck ligaments – bright white patches on the scan. You see it in whiplash victims, but with Alison I thought it was unusual. On top of what my husband had told me-'

  'What about the Midazolam?'

  'His benzodiazepine of choice? It was a very clever choice, as a matter of fact, especially as there was every chance it would be the same drug given to Alison in A and E. How's that for muddying the waters?'

  Thorne stopped. They were outside Alison's room.

  'Can we check that?'

  'I did. And it was. I know the anaesthetist who was on duty. at the Royal London that night. The toxicology report showed Midazolam in Alison's bloodstream but it would have done anyway – that's what was used to sedate her in A and E. But we also take blood routinely, on admission, so I checked. Midazolam was present in that first blood sample too. That's when I decided to contact the police.'

  Thorne nodded. A doctor. He had to be. 'Where else do they use Midazolam?'

  She thought for a moment. 'It's pretty specialised. It's, A and E, Anesthetics, that's about it.'

  'Where's he getting it from? Hospitals? Can't you get this sort of stuff over the Internet?'

  'Not in these quantities.'

  Thorne knew that this would mean contacting every hospital in the country for recorded thefts of Midazolam. He wasn't sure how far back to check. Six months? Two years? He'd err on the side of caution. Besides, he was sure Holland could use the overtime.

  Coburn opened the door to Alison's room.

  'Can she hear us?' Thorne asked.

  She brushed Alison's hair off her face and smiled at him indulgently. 'Well, if she can't, it's not because there's anything wrong with her hearing.'

  Thorne felt himself re
dden. Idiot. Why did people whisper at hospital bedsides?

  'To be honest, I'm not sure. The early signs are good. She blinks to sudden noises but there are still tests to be done. I talk to her anyway. She already knows which registrar is an alcoholic and which consultant is doing it with three of his students.'

  Thorne raised an inquisitive eyebrow. Coburn sat and took Alison's hand.

  'Sorry, Detective Inspector, girls' talk!'

  Thorne could do little but watch her among the mess of wires and machinery. Wires and machinery with a young woman attached. He listened to the hiss of Alison's ventilated lungs and felt the throb of her computerised pulse, and he thought about the one doctor out there somewhere who was most definitely on his shit list.

  He sat on the tube trying to guess how much longer the businessman opposite him had to live. It was a game he greatly enjoyed.

  It had been such a wonderful moment the day before when Thorne had looked straight at him. He hadn't really seen him: it had been no more than half a second and he was just a passer-by with his hood up, but it had been a lovely bonus. The look on the policeman's face had told him that he'd understood the note. Now he could relax and enjoy what had to be done. He'd lie in the bath when he got home and think about it some more. He'd think about Thorne's face. Then he'd grab a few hours' sleep. He was working later on.

  The man opposite looked flushed. Another tough day at the office. He had a smoker's face, pale and blotchy. The broken veins on his cheeks were probably a sign of bad circulation and excessive drinking. The small, creamy blobs on the eyelids, the xanthelasma, almost certainly meant that his cholesterol was way too high, and that his arteries were well furred up.

  The businessman gritted his teeth as he turned the pages of his newspaper.

  He gave him ten years at most.

  As his battle-scarred blue Mondeo moved smoothly through the early-morning traffic on the Marylebone Road, Thorne nudged the Massive Attack tape into the stereo and leaned back in his seat. If he'd wanted to relax and switch off he'd have plumped for some Johnny Cash or Gram Parsons or Hank Williams, but there was nothing like the repetitive, hypnotic thud of music he was twenty-five years too old for to concentrate his thoughts. As ever, when the mechanised beat of 'Unfinished Sympathy' started thumping from the speakers he pictured the incredulous look on the face of the teenage assistant in Our Price. Smug little git had looked at him like he was some old saddo trying to pretend he still had his finger on the pulse.

  The spotty teenage face became the infinitely more attractive one belonging to Anne Coburn. He wondered what sort of music she liked. Classical, probably, but with a Hendrix album or two stashed away behind the Mozart and Mendelssohn. What would she make of his penchant for trip-hop and speed-garage? He guessed that she'd go for the saddo theory. He stopped at the lights and rolled down the window to let the beat blast out at the snooty looking woman in the Saab next to him. Thorne stared straight ahead. When the light hit amber, he turned, winked at her and pulled gently away.

  And when he got back to HQ? There would be a convincing babble of efficient-sounding voices, a scurrying back and forth with files, and the buzzing and beeping of faxes and modems. Thorne smacked out the rhythm on his steering-wheel. And as a backdrop to this montage of proper procedure there would be the wall; a blackboard detailing names, dates and ACTIONS, and lined up above it there would be the pictures: Christine, Madeleine and Susan. Their unmarked faces sharing a pallid blankness, but each, to Thorne, seeming to capture a dreadful final instant of some unfamiliar emotion. Confusion. Terror. Regret. All in extremis. He turned up the music. In factories and offices across London, workers were copping furtive glances at calendar girls – Saucy Sandra, Naughty Nina, Wicked Wendy. The days, weeks and months that lay ahead for Thorne would be counted off by the reproachful faces of Dead Christine, Dead Madeleine and Dead Susan.

  'How's it going, Tommy?'

  Christine Owen. Thirty-four. Found lying at the bottom of the stairs…

  'Shake 'em up, will you, Tom, for fuck's sake?'

  Madeleine Vickery. Thirty-seven. Dead on her kitchen floor. A pan of spaghetti boiled dry…

  'Please, Tom…'

  Susan Carlish. Twenty-six. Her body discovered in an armchair. Watching television…

  ' Tell us what you're going to do, Tom:

  They would make lists, no question, long lists they would cross-reference with different ones. DC's would ask hundreds of different people the same questions and type out their notes and DS's would take statements and make phone calls and type out their notes, which would be collated and indexed and, perhaps, several thousand fields full of cows' worth of shoe leather later, they might get lucky…

  'Sorry, girls, nothing yet:

  They weren't going to catch this bloke with procedure. Thorne could feel it already. This wasn't the convenient copper's hunch of a thriller writer – he knew it. The killer might get himself caught. Yes, there was a chance of that. The profilers and psychological experts reckoned that, deep down, they all wanted to be caught. He'd have to ask Anne Coburn what she thought about that the next time he saw her. If that turned out to be sooner rather than later he wouldn't be complaining.

  Thorne pulled into the car park and killed the music. He stared up at the dirty brown building in which Backhand had made its home. The old station on Edgware Road had been earmarked for closure months ago and was now all but deserted, but the vacant offices above had been perfect for an operation like Backhand. Perfect for the lucky buggers who didn't have to work there every day. An open-plan monstrosity – one enormous fish tank for the minnows with a few smaller bowls around the edges for the bigger fish.

  For a moment he was deeply afraid to go in. He got out of the car and leaned against the bonnet until the moment passed.

  As he trudged towards the door, he made a decision. He wasn't going to let anyone put a picture of Alison on the wall.

  Fourteen hours later Thorne got home and rang his dad. They spoke as often as Thorne could manage and saw each other even less. Jim and Maureen Thorne had left North London for St Albans ten years before, but since his mum had died Thorne felt the distance between him and his dad growing greater all the time. Now they were both alone and their telephone conversations were always desperately trivial. His dad was always keen to pass on the latest dirty story or pub joke, and Thorne was always pleased to hear them. He liked to let his old man make him laugh – he liked to hear him laugh. Aside from the forced lightheartedness of these phone calls, he suspected that his father wasn't laughing a great deal. His father knew damn well that he wasn't.

  'I'll leave you with a couple of good ones, Tom.'

  'Go on then, Dad.'

  'What's got a one-inch knob and hangs down?'

  'I don't know.'

  'A bat.'

  It wasn't one of his best.

  'What's got a nine-inch knob and hangs up?'

  'No idea.'

  His dad put the phone down.

  He sat down and, for a few minutes, he said nothing. Then he began to speak softly. 'Perhaps, in retrospect, the note on the windscreen was a little.., showy. It's not like me, really. I'm not that sort of person. I suppose I just wanted to say sorry for the others. Well, if I'm being truthful, I must admit that a part of me wanted to boast just a little. And I think Thorne's a man I can talk to. He seems like a man who will understand how proud I am about getting it right. Perfection is everything, isn't it? And haven't I been taught that? You can believe it. I have been well taught.

  'I mean, it's been a struggle and I'm certainly not saying that I won't make any more mistakes, but what I'm doing gives me the right to fail, wouldn't you say?

  The one.., frustration is that I can only imagine how good it feels on the machines. Safe and clean. Free to relax and let the mind wander. No mess. And if I feel proud at liberating a body from the tyranny of the petty and the putrid then I can't be condemned for that, surely. It's the only real freedom left that's worth fighting
for, I'd say. Freedom from our clumsy movement through air. Our bruising Our… sensitivity. lb be released from the humdrum and the everyday. Fed and cleaned. Monitored and cared for. All our filthy fluids disposed of. And, above all, to know. To be aware of these wonders as they are happening. What does a corpse know of its vashing? To know and to feel all these things must be wonderful.

  'God, what am I thinking? I'm sorry. I don't have to tell you any of this.

  'Do I, Alison?'

  Sue and Kelly from the nursery came to see me yesterday. My vision's a lot better already. I could see that Sue was wearing far too much eyeliner as usual. There's plenty of gossip. Obviously not as much as usual with me in here, but still good stuff. Mary, the manageress, is really pissing everybody off, sitting on her arse and correcting the spelling on the happy charts. Daniel's still being a little sod. He cried for me last week, they said. They told him I'd gone to Spain on my holidays. They told me that when I came out we'd all go and get completely pissed and that they 'd rather be in here any day than changing shitty nappies on three pounds sixty an hour… There wasn't much else after that.

  And, at last, a bit of real excitement. Some bedpan-washer or something got blocked up. I know it doesn't sound earth shattering, but there was water everywhere and all the nurses were sloshing round and getting really pissed off. Excitement is relative, I suppose.

  I dreamed about my mum. She was young, like she was when I was at school. She was getting me dressed and I was arguing about what I was going to wear and she was weeping and weeping…

  And I dreamed about the man who did this to me. I dreamed that he was here in my room, talking to me. I knew his voice straight away. But it was also a voice I recognised from after it happened. My brain has gone to mush. He sat by my bed and squeezed my hand and tried to tell me why he'd done it. But I didn't really understand. He was telling me how I should be happy. That voice had told me to enjoy myself as he handed me the champagne bottle and I took a swig. I must have invited him in. I must have. I suppose the police know that. I wonder if they've told Tim?

  Now that dreams are the closest thing I have to sensation, they've become so vivid. It would be fantastic if you could press a button and choose what you were going to dream about. Obviously someone would have to press the button for me, but a selection of family and friends with a healthy degree of filth thrown in would be nice.