Sleepyhead tt-1

by Mark Billingham

  The old man didn't look up from his paper for the rest of the journey.

  Margaret Byrne's house was a five-minute walk from the station. He didn't know the area well but it seemed amazingly calm and suburban, considering that Brixton was two minutes away. Thorne had been on the streets there in 1981. He had never felt so hated. He and many fellow officers had comforted themselves with the thought that it was no more than police bashing. An excuse to torch some flash cars and nick a few TVs. Events since then had made him realise he'd been wrong. And Stephen Lawrence had changed everything.

  Thorne rang the doorbell and waited. The curtains in the front bay windows were drawn. The bedroom, he guessed. He looked at his watch; he was ten minutes or so late. He rang the doorbell again. He looked around in the hope of seeing a woman hurrying up the road, having popped out to grab a pint of milk, but saw only a woman in the house opposite, eyeing him suspiciously. He eyed her back. Thorne pressed himself against the window and peered through a small crack in the green curtains but the room was dark. He turned to see the woman across the road still staring at him. He began to feel uneasy.

  'Calm down, Tommy. She's probably just nodded off or something:

  "Oh Jesus, not nor,.'

  There was a small passage on the right-hand side of the house all but blocked by a couple of black plastic dustbins. Thorne climbed over them and walked slowly down the passageway. The high gate at the end was locked. He dropped his case over the gate and trudged back to grab one of the bins, having decided that the Neighbourhood Watch co-coordinator over the road would probably have caged the police by now anyway.

  He tried to lower himself down as far as possible on the other side of the fence but the drop to the patio on the other side still made his teeth jar. The small garden was neat and tidy. There were blouses and slacks hanging on a washing-line.

  The back door had been forced open.

  He knew he should unlock the gate and get back to the front of the house. He should phone for backup. He knew the phone was staying in his pocket.

  The rush was instant, and breathtaking. There was fear too, pumping round his body, tightening his fists and loosening his bowels. This was the fight-flight reflex at its most basic.

  Fight or flight. It was never going to be any contest. Thorne felt his skin slipping off and falling to the ground like an old overcoat. He felt his nerve-endings vibrate, raw and bloody, his senses painfully heightened. The wind in the trees was a cacophony. A face in a faraway window, an oncoming juggernaut. He could taste the air. Tinfoil on a filling.

  There was no theatrical creak as he pushed open the door and tensed every muscle. He stepped into a small kitchen. The surfaces were spotless, a tea-towel folded over a chair, washing-up stacked neatly on the draining-board. Thorne fought the impulse to reach for the breadknife and stood still, trying to control his breathing. To his left was an open door that he could see led on to the living room. He moved soundlessly across the linoleum and scanned the room. It was empty. The brown carpet looked new but was presumably the first stage of improvements – the suite was saggy and threadbare. Thorne hurried across the room, took a deep breath and opened the door at the far end. He was in a dimly lit hall just inside the front door. There were two more rooms opposite him. The one on the right nearest the front door had to be the bedroom; the other, he guessed, a toilet.

  It was worth a try. 'Mrs. Byrne?'

  Nothing.

  From behind the second door he heard a small, muffled thud. The thumping in his chest was anything but.

  'It always comes down to the final door, Tommy:

  ' Open it…'

  'She'll come walking through the front door in a minute and you'll feel like a right tit…'

  Thorne opened the door.

  He cried out, staggering backwards in sudden shock as something flew, hissing, out of the room and into his legs. He pushed himself off the wall and watched, his heart smashing against his chest as a cat careered into the living room. He heard the bang as it clattered through the cat flap in the kitchen door.

  Then he could smell it.

  Cat skit and something else. Something more familiar and far more disgusting. Tangy and metallic, and so strong he could have licked it out of the air. His tongue on a dying battery.

  Resigned to the harder stuff…

  Resigned to the inevitability of what he was going to see, Thorne stepped forward into the darkened room and reached for the light switch.

  There were four more cats. One stared down at him from the top of the wardrobe while a second hopped lazily from a highly polished dressing-table. Two more were on the bed. Curled up across the body of Margaret Byrne.

  She lay straight, down the edge of the left-hand side of the bed, her hands by her side, her head back and turned towards him. One eye was half open but not as wide as the scarlet smile across her neck, the incision made gaping by the angle of her head on the pillow.

  'Sweet Christ…'

  The blood was pooled beneath her collar-bone and had overflowed across her left side and on to the duvet, from where it still dripped slowly on to the patterned blue carpet. One side of her pink blouse was sopping red. A foot or so from where Thorne was standing, frozen to the spot, there was another bloodstain, already sunk in and brown. Spatter patterns snaked away across the carpet, reaching as far as the wall on the opposite side of the bed. He could see straight away that this was where she'd been attacked, before being laid out on the bed to die, he guessed, a short time later. While her killer watched. Something glinting on the carpet near the end of the bed caught his eye. An earring, perhaps. He could see a necklace too, and rings, and a wooden jewelry box on its side by the wall.

  Margaret Byrne had tried to save the few things she had which were precious. But the man she had tried to save them from had not come to rob her.

  Once again the nagging voice of procedure. He was contaminating a crime scene. He needed to get out. He regretted not asking Holland about her when he'd had the chance. Now he had to stand in a carpeted and perfumed slaughterhouse and piece it together. It wasn't hard to get a feeling for her. Of her. The cats and the neatly arranged bottles and jars on the dressing-table told him enough. He felt behind him for the solidity of the wall, leaned back against it and lowered himself slowly to the floor. The cat that had been sniffing around, a small black and-white one, ambled over and nuzzled his shins. Thorne reached into his pocket for his phone and held it, dangling between his knees.

  He wanted to stay with Margaret for a while before he made the call.

  When the cars arrived Thorne was sitting on the doorstep, staring at the woman in the window opposite. The cat, who would not leave him alone, was making itself comfortable on his lap. Holland walked up and hovered. After a few moments Thorne looked up with a twisted smile. He had expected Tughan and was relieved not to see him. He couldn't see anybody he thought might be Brewer either.

  'Been promoted, Holland?'

  Holland said nothing. Remembering his conversation with Maggie Byrne on the same spot the day before, he was a word, a heartbeat from tears. Thorne watched the SOCO's steaming up the passageway with their equipment. He had felt the same way as Holland fifteen minutes earlier but now a strange calm had begun to settle over him.

  'He executed her, Dave. He broke into her house and executed her.'

  Holland looked straight back at him and spoke evenly, his face showing nothing.

  'He's been busy.'

  PART THREE

  THE WEIRD

  I'm going to chuck Tim today. Does that sound a bit sudden?

  Sorry, I know it's out of the blue and maybe I should have built up to it a bit more, but I've been thinking about it for a good while.

  Thinking about it.

  Like I can do anything else. I'm hardly in a position to discuss boyfriend problems with my best mate, even if l was sure I still had one. Well, I could, but it would be the dullest girly gossip in history. Barley water and blackboards are no substitute f
or booze and fags and a home-delivery pizza. And staring isn't laughing, is it?

  But I have been thinking a lot about Tim and how unhappy he is. It's a real old line, I know, but it's for his sake rather than mine. Chucking him, I mean. I won't be trotting out shite like "I love you but I'm not in love with you or 'I think we should just be friends: To be honest, I'm not exactly sure what I will say. I say "say'. Obviously I mean 'blink' and 'twitch' while the poor sod tries to keep the smile plastered to his face as he does his best to work out what the fuck I'm on about. It's not as if I've got anything to go on, nothing I've ever seen in a film or on telly. Tearful farewells to terminally ill loved ones are ten a penny but this is pretty sodding unique. Never seen this on East Enders or Brookside. It's probably only a matter of time, of course. They'll drag it out over a couple of months. Milk it a bit. Probably be the big Christmas cliffhanger with the tragic, yet still very sexy young woman in the hospital bed blinking like buggery while her hunky boyfriend kneels by the side of the bed, sobbing his heart out and telling her that he still loves her no matter what.

  Yeah, right…

  So I don't really know how I'm going to do it, but it's got to be done. I've only ever dumped one person. I was seventeen and he copped off with one of my mates at a party. Had his hand up her bra while I was in the queue for the toilet. Even so, the actual chucking was pretty tricky, and bear in mind, that was when I was vertical with a working gob.

  The way I am now, it's shaping up to be a nightmare. I know that in letting Tim off this very nasty hook, I'm probably coming across like some selfless, saintly figure, but the sad truth is that actually I'm just being a right selfish cow. Because the fact is that he won't do it.

  And I can't stand to see the pain in his eyes any more when he looks at me.

  He doesn't know what to do, bless him. He talks, slowly. He talks and he uses the pointer like Anne showed him but I know he can't bear it. He's always been a bit of a girl about hospitals and blood and anything like that.

  He said that he wished it had happened to him instead of me, and I know he means it. Before it sounds like this is me setting him free, or some cobblers like that, so he can go off and find someone else, I should say that if I ever get out of here and get myself sorted out, he'd better come running straight back, and I won't want to hear about what he's been up to and who with.

  The truth is simple. He can't stand to see me hurt, and I feel the same way about him. And he looks utterly crushed all the time he's with me and it's my fault. I'm five feet fuck-all and I can't move a muscle and I'm squashing all the life out of him. So best to knock it on the head for now. Not the best choice of words probably but that's not something I get a lot of say in these days.

  He's not going to like it. He'll cry most probably, big soft thing, or shout. Actually that would be good, there's nothing like a bit of a scene to get the nurses going, but I think that when he goes home and thinks about it he'll be relieved. For Christ's sake, our dream ticket, our magic-island scenario, the best we can fucking hope for, involves wheelchairs and computers and one of us winning the lottery to pay for it all, and me about as much use as one of my two-year-olds and I wouldn't wish that on anybody.

  Tim cares about me, I know he does. But I couldn't bear to be pitied. Loved is fine. But not pitied.

  And "cares for' is not "cares about; is it?

  So Tim, think yourself lucky, pet, and I apologise in advance if, at the crucial moment in your posh wedding to some drop-dead gorgeous blonde, when the vicar says that bit about just cause or impediment", the door to the church crashes open and some spackhead in a wheelchair trundles in. Just ignore me and get on with it. I'll probably be pissed… Fuck me, did you hear what I said before?

  'If I ever get out of here:

  FOURTEEN

  The cat had sat and watched, content, unblinking, as a woman who loved her had been smashed across the back of the head and bled dry like a pig. Now she sat staring down at the face of a man who didn't understand any more than she had. Rising and falling with him as he breathed. Rising and falling and watching his eyes. They were dosed but she followed the movements of his eyeballs, darting back and forth behind the eyelids like tiny trapped animals. Looking for a way out. Searching for a weak spot. Heads bulging behind the eyes, threatening to burst through the paper-thin skin…. and Maggie Byrne smiled and lay back on the bed. She kicked off her shoes and rubbed her feet together. He could hear the nylon of her tights crackling. He said something – a joke maybe. She threw back her head to laugh and the red line beneath her chin started to gape. She blushed and reached for a scarf and he told her that it didn't matter but she was already starting to cry. She shook her head and sobbed and tried to tie the scarf around her neck. The gash gaped wider until it looked like something on a fishmonger's slab. The not-so-slender neck, hacked into sections like tuna. Pink then a darker pink then red. And his words would not comfort her. And he tried to take her in his arms but they slipped from around her neck. And his hands were stroking her collarbone and his fingers were exploring the damp and clammy interior of the wound.

  Testing for freshness.

  Maggie Byrne tried to scream but it came whistling from her neck.

  He opened his eyes…

  He hadn't been asleep and it wasn't a dream. Just a mental snapshot, twisted. A memory adjusted and warped by the unwelcome addition of an imagination. Something that lived in the ghoulish and morbid corner of his subconscious having its bit of fun.

  He opened his eyes…

  And waited for the images to blur and become distant. Lying on the sofa, hearing his heartbeat slow down. Feeling the beads of sweat on his face evaporate. Letting something creep back into its corner.

  Until the next time.

  He opened his eyes and stared back at the cat sitting on his chest.

  'Fuck off, Elvis!'

  The cat jumped off Thorne and slunk away towards the bedroom. Maggie had beer] a big Elvis fan and had named the cat before it had been sexed. She'd always thought it was funny. Sally Byrne had taken a couple of her mother's cats back to Edinburgh with her, and the rest had gone to the PDSA, but Elvis had been Thorne's from the moment he'd opened the door to Maggie's bedroom and breathed in the blood. The cat seemed drawn to him, Sally had said. To need him, almost.

  Almost as much as he needed her.

  Just over two weeks now since he'd opened that bedroom door. Just over twenty-four hours since Margaret Byrne's funeral. Thorne didn't know about the arrangements for Leonie Holden. He was what he'd once heard Nick Tughan describe as 'out of the loop' on that one. Her funeral might well already have happened. They'd found her a few hours before he'd found Maggie Byrne, and if Phil Hendricks had got the bits of her he needed, safely labeled in jars, then the body would have been released back to those for whom it still meant something real. Something in their hearts and in their guts. Then they could say goodbye.

  There would have been an official presence at her funeral, of course. It was often just some flowers but he could picture Tughan at the back of a church, in black like an assassin. He wondered if Frank Keable would have put in an appearance. Or somebody higher up. If the body count carried on rising they'd end up having to send the commissioner along. A thin smile and a wreath of white lilies spelling out 'Sorry, doing our best'. Thorne had never made a habit of attending the funerals of his victims.., the victims of his cases – on his cases. He'd go on the occasions when they thought there was a fair chance of the killer turning up. He'd stand at the back then, scanning the mourners, looking for one who didn't belong. There was no chance of the killer attending the funerals of these victims, though. He wanted to forget the dead ones. They were his failures.

  It suddenly struck Thorne like a hammer to the chest that he had no idea when Helen Doyle had been buried. Buried, of course, not cremated. Leaving it open for a second post-mortem, should one be needed, or demanded much later by the accused.

  Even dead, her body was not her own.

&n
bsp; Thorne swung his feet to the floor, sat up and rubbed his eyes. The sweat was making them sting. He was starving. There was a headache starting…

  It was time to stop hiding.

  He'd emerged briefly to pay the respects he felt were due to Margaret Byrne, that he guessed she'd never received when she was alive. He'd hugged the daughter of a woman he'd known only in death. He'd held her close as she wept. He'd laughed as she talked about cats and waved as she climbed into the funeral car.

  He'd looked across the all-but-empty church at Dave Holland, who sat stony-faced and stiff, like a sixth-former in an uncomfortable collar. They'd nodded to each other and looked away quickly. It was probably best to keep a little distance with so much accusation still flying around. So much blame to be doled out.

  Thorne had given himself a fair bit of explaining to do and hadn't made a particularly good job of it. They knew it was Holland who'd told him about Margaret Byrne and given him her address. They couldn't prove it, but they knew. It didn't change anything. It didn't explain to anybody how the killer had found out. Or how the killer had known that Thorne was close to a positive identification. Or how the killer had been able to pop round to snuff out the threat before calmly going . about the business of slaughtering Leonie Holden.

  Nothing was easily explained, but what was obvious to everyone was that Thorne had no business being anywhere near Margaret Byrne. He looked unreliable.

  He felt responsible.

  Margaret Byrne had died because of what she knew and what she could tell him. That was obvious. She'd died because Thorne knew who the killer was and because she could identify him and because somewhere, in an inept operation that he'd once been a part of, there was a leak big enough to sink a battleship.