Sleepyhead

by Mark Billingham

  And the policemen who remembered the smell of the blood.

  Was that your first time?

  Thorne carried the coffee into the living room, but stopped in the doorway the second he looked at Holland, who was sitting on the settee and staring at the wall opposite. It was not the faraway look of drunkenness, or tiredness, or boredom.

  Thorne felt his heartbeat increase.

  He hadn’t asked why Holland had come here in the first place.

  Holland turned to him. ‘We were trying to get hold of you . . .’

  Thorne remembered his phone, chucked into the back of his car. ‘What’s happened, Dave?’

  Holland tried to shape an answer and now Thorne recognised the look. He’d seen it fifteen years before, in the bottom of glasses and in shop windows and in mirrors. The look of a young man who’s seen far too much death.

  Holland spoke, his voice, his eyes, his expression dead. ‘Michael and Eileen Doyle . . . Helen Doyle’s mum and dad. The next-door neighbour noticed the smell.’

  Apparently, the stroke affected only a very small part of my brain. In the brainstem.

  The ‘inferior pons’ this particular bit’s called, if you can believe that.

  It’s just unfortunate that it happens to be the bit that controls things. All the communications pass through it. If your brain’s Paddington station, this bit’s the signal box. Basically, the signals still get waved or switched on or whatever. When I want to wiggle a toe or sniff or speak, the instruction still goes out. This thing called a relay cell is supposed to make it happen: it fires the signal down the line to the next cell and then the next one. It’s like a microscopic version of ‘pass it on’ all the way to my toe or my nose or wherever. Unfortunately, somewhere in the middle, some of the cells aren’t playing the game properly and that’s the end of that. In layman’s terms, this is me.

  Bizarrely, though, as one part of my brain is fucked, it feels like other parts are compensating and changing. The bit that deals with sound. It feels like that bit’s been upgraded. I can distinguish between sounds that are very similar. I can place a nurse by the squeak of her shoe and tell how far away things are. The sounds give me a picture in my head, like I’m turning into a bat.

  And it’s helping me to remember.

  Those underwater sounds are getting clearer every day. Words are sharpening up. I can make out a lot of what we said to each other now, me and the man who put me in hospital.

  Fragments of a soundtrack.

  A lot of it’s me, of course, no real surprise there, waffling on about the party and the wedding and stuff. Christ, I sound very pissed. I can hear the champagne going down my throat and I can hear him laughing at my dismal, drunken jokes.

  I hear myself playing with the front-door keys. Inviting him inside to finish the drink. Slurred and stupid words. Words that are hardly worth remembering. The last words ever to come out of my mouth.

  I’m still groping for the words that came out of his.

  TWENTY

  As Thorne drove towards the Edgware Road, he found himself fighting to stay awake. The noise of six empty beer cans, rattling around in the footwell, was helping, but it was still a struggle. It had been a long night, and a bleak one. Not even the spectacle of Holland on the phone that morning, squirming and looking pained as he tried sheepishly to explain to Sophie where he’d spent the night, had raised the spirits.

  They’d talked long into the night. Holland told Thorne what had happened to Michael and Eileen Doyle. They’d done it with tablets. The police had been called to the house on Windsor Road by a neighbour. She’d presumed they’d gone away to stay with relatives after what had happened to Helen.

  A PC found them in an upstairs bedroom. They were holding hands.

  In spite of what Holland had already had to drink, Thorne dug out a few cans and they’d sat up talking about everything and nothing. Parents, partners, the job. As the drink met the tiredness head on, Holland had started to drift off, and Thorne began to ramble vaguely about the girls. About Christine and Susan and Madeleine. And Helen. He didn’t say anything about their voices. He didn’t mention how strange he found it that he never heard the voice of Maggie Byrne.

  Thorne wondered if Holland heard it. He never asked him.

  The note lay beside him on the passenger seat, safely wrapped up. He saw himself handing it over in exchange for a warrant. He heard himself reading Jeremy Bishop his rights. He pictured himself leading the good doctor away, down the front path, past his terracotta pots full of dead and dying flowers.

  Then he arrived at work and it all fell apart.

  ‘They couldn’t get a thing. Sorry, Tom.’

  Keable did look sorry. But not as sorry as Thorne. They’d been waiting for him, Keable and Tughan, to fuck him up the second he stepped out of the lift.

  ‘A ring’s a difficult enough thing to print anyway by all accounts. A small surface area. This one was just a mess. Dozens of partials but nothing worth writing up. We even sent it over to the Yard. SO3 have got better equipment, but —’

  ‘What about dead skin on the inside? Hairs from a finger?’ Thorne was trying to sound reasonable.

  Tughan shook his head. ‘The bloke I spoke to said it was a forensic nightmare. It’s been up and down the country, for Christ’s sake, handled by God knows how many people.’

  Thorne slumped back against the lift doors and felt fury fighting a battle with tiredness for control of him. ‘Did you at least check the hallmark? Check it and you’ll find out that ring was made the same year Bishop got married.’

  Keable nodded but Tughan was in no mood to humour Thorne. ‘Listen, even if we do get something, the chain of evidence is non-existent.’

  The fury won the battle. ‘And whose fault is that? This has been one huge fuck-up from start to finish. I should have had a warrant by now. I should be tearing that bastard’s house apart. This case should be over by now – over.’

  Tughan moved back towards his desk. ‘It was only ever a slim ­possibility, Tom. We knew that even if you didn’t. What were you planning to do anyway? Slip it on to Bishop’s finger like a fucking glass slipper?’

  Thorne waited until Tughan’s self-indulgent chuckle had finished. ‘How are you planning to spend the money the newspaper paid you, Nick?’

  The colour rose immediately to Tughan’s hollow cheeks. ­Keable stared hard at him, then back to Thorne, deciding finally that accusations would be best left until another day. ‘Listen, Tom,’ Keable said, ‘nobody’s more upset about this than me and I’m going to crack some heads, trust me.’

  And now Thorne felt the tiredness come rushing at him. He could barely keep his head erect. He closed his eyes. He had no idea how long they’d been closed when Keable next spoke. ‘We’ve got this latest note. It’s a significant development.’

  ‘Another press conference?’

  ‘I think it would be a good idea, yes.’

  Thorne called the lift back up. Raising his arm and bringing his finger to the button was a struggle. He had an idea now of the effort it took for Alison to blink. He wanted to go home. He had no intention of hanging around and answering phones. He needed to lie down and switch himself off.

  One final question: ‘Is Jeremy Bishop this investigation’s prime suspect?’

  Keable hesitated a fraction too long before replying, but Thorne didn’t hear the answer anyway, thanks to the roaring in his ears.

  He was driving much too fast along the Marylebone Road. The exertion of steering, of concentrating, was leaving him wringing with sweat, which dripped from him as he leaned forward, crippled with exhaustion. It took every last ounce of energy he had to tap out a rhythm on the wheel, as the music exploded from the speakers.

  He turned up the volume as high as it would go. He winced. The cheap speakers distorted the sound, turning
the treble into shattering glass and the bass into a collision. The music, if it could still be called that, was shaking the car apart, but he would have made it even louder if he could. He wanted to be bludgeoned by the noise. He wanted to be hypnotised.

  He wanted to be anaesthetised . . .

  He swerved into the inside lane, reached for his phone and pulled up just past Madame Tussaud’s.

  He flicked on the hazards, turned down the music and hit the speed dial.

  A long queue of tourists was standing in the rain, waiting to get in and gawp at the waxy doppelgangers of pop stars, politicians and sportsmen. And, of course, mass murderers: the Chamber of Horrors was always the most popular attraction.

  Anywhere.

  The violent death gravy train . . .

  She picked up.

  ‘It’s me . . . I’m sorry about yesterday.’

  ‘OK . . .’ Sounding unsure, hedging her bets.

  ‘Look, Anne, everything’s changed, fucked up to be honest, and I just wanted to tell you . . .’ Your ex-boyfriend’s off the hook. ‘. . . the evidence I thought I had hasn’t . . . materialised, so just ignore what I said, all right?’

  ‘What about Jeremy?’

  ‘Can I see you later?’

  ‘Is he still a suspect?’

  This time it was Thorne’s turn to hesitate too long before replying.

  ‘Can you come over later?’

  ‘Listen, Tom, I won’t say I’m not pleased because I am. I’m sorry about yesterday too, though . . .’

  In the background Thorne could hear a doctor being paged. He waited until it had finished. ‘Anne . . .’

  ‘I’ll be over about five-ish. I’m on call tonight so I’ll sneak away from here early. All right?’

  It was very all right.

  He’d legislated for some ineptitude. There had been a little give built into his thinking. But this was way beyond anything he’d imagined.

  Fucking morons. Stupid fucking idiots.

  It was stupid to expect any kind of equilibrium, he knew that, but this kind of unpredictability was so fucking annoying.

  He’d started to feel the depression take hold again the second he’d put the phone down, wrapping itself around him, like a dark, itchy blanket. Making him scratch. Making him smell.

  He walked up and down in straight lines. Up one board and down the other. Moving slowly across the room in vertical lines. Up one, his bare feet cool against the bleached floorboards. Down the other, his toes caressing each knot and whorl of the beautifully smooth wood. Up and down, his fingers stroking the straight, puckered lines that ran across his stomach.

  Up and down, his breathing slowing, the white walls soothing . . .

  He could roll with the punches. He was adaptable, wasn’t he? Champagne or IV. His place or theirs. Hen nights or night buses. Whatever was necessary. This would not be the perfect way to end it but it would certainly do the trick. His plan, of course, the magic-island scenario, the beautiful by-product of his medical work, had involved a little suffering spread out over a very long time. A lot of suffering, quickly, might prove just as enjoyable.

  He picked up the phone to call her back. She’d be happy he’d called. She’d be thrilled with the invitation. Excited at the hint of what the evening might hold in store. Not as excited as he was, obviously, but then he knew just how good it was really going to be.

  Time to get proactive.

  Time to find a different way of hurting.

  Anne managed to get away from Queen Square even earlier than she’d thought, but by the time she got to the flat, around four, Thorne had already spent the best part of six hours bouncing off the walls.

  He’d tried going to bed but it was pointless. Every muscle screamed out for sleep but his brain wasn’t listening. There was a force in him that was now directionless, an energy desperately seeking an outlet. Though his body felt as weary as it had ever felt, his mind was racing. It roared and rumbled and skidded and slipped from its track, then spun around and roared away again.

  He could confront Bishop with the ring.

  Tell him that they’d found incriminating evidence.

  Plant the fucking evidence . . .

  He could beat a confession out of him. Christ, it would be good to feel the bones in that face shatter beneath his pounding fists and not stop hitting until Bishop hovered somewhere between life and death and felt what it was like to be Alison Willetts . . .

  ‘Whatever it takes, Tommy.’

  Helen, I’m so sorry about . . .

  ‘It’s all right, Tommy. Just get him. You can still get him, can’t you?’

  Part of him imagined that Anne would come and kiss it all away, fuck it all away, and he would go to sleep and wake up cleansed.

  And that was almost how it happened.

  She bounded into his living room like a teenager, and the first smile of his day made his face ache. She told him to lie down and went to make them both tea.

  He’d told her once that he didn’t want a mother. Right now he wasn’t arguing.

  She brought the drinks through to the living room. ‘You sounded a bit manic when you called.’

  He grunted. When she pulled away the cushion he was holding across his face, she was relieved to see that he was grinning.

  ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘Like I’ve taken uppers and downers, hundreds of them.’

  She handed him his tea. ‘Have you ever?’

  Thorne shook his head. ‘Booze and fags. Honest ­working-class drugs.’

  ‘The most dangerous of them all.’

  He sipped his tea, staring at the ceiling. ‘What I need, I reckon, is about six weeks in one of those nice, cosy rooms you’ve got on ITU. Just drug me up and lay on some nice, sexy doctor to minister to my needs. Is the room next to Alison available? Do they have Sky? I’ll pay, obviously . . .’

  Anne laughed and lowered herself into the armchair. ‘I’ll let you know when we’ve got one free.’

  ‘How is she? I didn’t know she was back on the ventilator.’ Anne looked at him questioningly. ‘I went in to see her the other day. You were in a meeting, I think.’

  ‘I know. She seemed a little distracted afterwards . . .’

  He ignored the implied question. ‘Is she any better?’

  Anne shook her head, and for the first time felt tired herself. ‘She’s always going to be prone to infections of this sort. Two steps forward . . .’

  A dance with which Thorne was all too familiar.

  Anne raised an eyebrow. ‘What did you say to Alison?’ Remembering the last time. The photograph he’d kept hidden.

  Thorne laughed. A splutter of self-disgust. ‘I went to let her know I was about to arrest Jeremy Bishop.’

  The small-talk had lasted about as long as the tea.

  The silence that fell between them was in danger of becoming terminal when Anne spoke quietly, not looking at him: ‘Why did you think it was him, Tom?’

  Did? Past tense. Not for Thorne.

  ‘It started with the drugs theft obviously. Then the connection to Alison and lack of an alibi for the other killings. The physical description, and the car . . .’ He sighed heavily, pushing finger and thumb hard into his eyes and rubbing. ‘It’s all academic. I’ve got no evidence and no warrant to go and get any.’

  ‘What did you think you’d find?’

  ‘Typewriter maybe. The drugs probably. Unless he kept them at the hospital, which . . .’

  Anne was suddenly on her feet, pacing around the room. ‘You keep going on about these drugs but it just doesn’t make any sense. Why the hell would he need to steal drugs in those quantities, Tom? Jeremy works with this stuff every day of his life. If he’d wanted to, he could have taken as much as he liked without
anyone ever getting suspicious. He could pocket an ampoule, even a couple, every day for six months and nobody would ever notice. So why draw attention to himself by stealing a huge quantity all in one go? It’s only when drugs go missing in those amounts that it’s even registered. Jeremy would not have needed to do that, Tom.’

  And boom! There it was. The tune he’d been unable to place. That had been what was bothering him all along, lurking at the back of his brain, slippery and elusive. She was right, of course. Why had none of them ever really sat down and spoken to a fucking doctor? How could they have missed it? How could he have missed it?

  Easy: he hadn’t wanted it to be there.

  Hendricks: You’ve got blinkers on and I’m fucking sick of it.

  He felt like the breath had been taken from him. Beaten out of his body. Christ, it was all coming apart in front of him.

  ‘I’m sorry, Tom.’

  He closed his eyes. Screwed them shut. He knew it wasn’t Anne who should be apologising. There were people he needed to say sorry to.

  The first time he’d laid eyes on him, he thought he’d looked like the doctor from The Fugitive. That doctor had been innocent as well.

  ‘I got thinking it was him and wanting it to be him mixed up, I think . . .’

  ‘Ssssh . . .’ She was kneeling beside the settee, stroking his hair.

  ‘It got too personal. There wasn’t enough distance.’

  ‘Tom, it doesn’t matter now. Nobody was hurt.’

  ‘I was so sure, Anne. So sure Calvert was the killer . . .’ He felt her hand stop moving. Shook his head. Tried to laugh it off.

  Slip of the tongue.

  ‘Bishop, I mean. Bishop.’