Lazybones tt-3

by Mark Billingham

  This was a significant murder scene. This was the work of a killer driven by something special, something spectacular. The room stank of hatred and of rage. It also stank of pride. Hendricks, as if reading Thorne's mind, turned to him, half smiling.

  'Just another five minutes, OK? I'm not going to get anything else here…'

  Thorne nodded. He looked at the dead man on the bed – the position of him, as if he were paying homage. Had it not been for the belt, for the livid red furrow that circled his neck, for the thin lines of blood that ran down the backs of his pale thighs, he might have been praying. Thorne guessed that at the end, he probably had been. The room was hot. Thorne raised an arm to rub a sore eye and felt the tickle as a drop of sweat slid down his ribs then took a sudden, sharp turn across his belly.

  Down below, a frustrated driver leaned on his horn… Thorne was not even aware that he'd closed his eyes and when he heard a phone ring, he snapped them open, convinced for a few wonderful moments that he'd woken suddenly from a bad dream. He turned, a little disorientated, and saw Holland standing next to the bedside table. The phone was an off-white seventies model, the dial cracked, the grimy handset visibly jumping in its cradle. Thorne was now fully alert but he was still somewhat confused. Was this a call for them? Was it police business? Or was it possible that whoever was down at what passed for a reception desk had not been told what was happening and had put a caller through from the outside? Having met one or two of the staff, Thorne could well believe that even knowing exactly what had happened, they might still be dim enough to put a call through to the occupant of Room Six. If that was the case, it would certainly be a stroke of luck…

  Thorne moved towards the ringing phone. The rest of the team stood frozen, watching him.

  The victim's clothes – it had to be presumed they were the victim's lay strewn about the floor nearby. Trousers – minus their belt – and underpants were next to the chair. Shirt, crumpled into a ball. One shoe under the bed, up near the headboard. The brown corduroy jacket, slung across the back of a chair next to the bed, had contained no personal items. No wallet, no bus tickets, no crinkled photographs. Nothing that might help identify the dead man… Thorne did not know if the phone had already been dusted for fingerprints, and he had no time to check. He reached out to grab a plastic evidence bag from the fat, babyish SOCO and wrapped it around his hand. He held the hand up, wanting silence. He didn't need to ask.

  He took a breath and picked up the receiver. 'Hello…?'

  'Oh… hi.' A woman's voice.

  Thorne locked eyes with Holland. 'Who did you want to speak to?' He was holding the phone an inch or so away from his ear. and didn't hear the answer properly. 'Sorry, it's not a very good line, could you shout up?'

  'Is that any good?'

  'That's great.' Thorne tried to sound casual. 'Who do you want to speak to?' '

  'Oh… I'm not really sure, actually…'

  Thorne looked at Holland again and shook his head. Fuck. It wasn't going to be that easy. 'Who am I talking to?'

  'Sorry?'

  'Who are you?'

  There was a short pause before she spoke. The voice was suddenly a little tighter. Confident though, and refined. 'Listen, I don't want to sound rude, but it was somebody there who called me. I don't particularly want to give out…'

  'This is Detective Inspector Thorne from the Serious Crime Group

  …'

  A pause. Then: 'I thought I was calling a hotel…'

  'You have called a hotel. Could you please give me your name?' He looked across at Holland, puffed out his cheeks. Holland was poised, notebook in hand, looking utterly confused.

  'You could be anybody,' the woman said.

  'Listen, if it makes you happier, I can call you back. Better still, let me give you a number to call so you can check. Ask for DCI Russell Brigstocke. And I'll give you my mobile number…'

  'Why do I need your mobile number if you're calling me back?'

  The conversation was starting to get faintly ridiculous. Thorne thought he could detect a note of amusement, perhaps even flirtation, creeping into this woman's voice. Pleasing as this was on an otherwise grim morning, he wasn't really in the mood.

  'Madam, the phone I'm speaking on, the phone you've called, is located at a crime scene and I need to know why you're calling.'

  He got the message across. The woman, though suddenly sounding a little panicky, did as she was asked.

  'It was on my answering machine. I got here; I got into work this morning, and checked my messages. This one was the first. The man who called left the name of the hotel and the room number for delivery…'

  The man who called. Was that the man on the bed, or…?

  'What was the message?'

  'He was placing an order. Bloody funny time to be doing it, though. That was why I was a bit.., cautious about calling. I thought it might be a joke, you know, kids messing about, but kids wouldn't give you the right address, would they?'

  'Did he leave a name?'

  'No, which is one of the reasons I'm calling. And to get a credit card number. I don't do cash on delivery…'

  'What do you mean, bloody funny time?'

  'The message was left at ten past three this morning. I bought one of those flashy machines that tells you the time, you know?'

  Thorne pressed the mouthpiece to his chest, looked across at Hendricks. 'I know the time of death. A tenner says you don't get within half an hour either side…'

  'Hello?'

  Thorne put the phone back to his ear. 'Sorry, I was conferring with a colleague. Can I ask you to keep the tape from the machine, Miss…?'

  'Eve Bloom.'

  'You said something about placing an order?'

  'Oh sorry, didn't I say? I'm a florist. He was ordering some flowers. That's why I was slightly freaked out, I suppose…'

  'I don't understand. Freaked…?'

  'Well, to be ordering what he was ordering in the middle of the night…'

  'What exactly did the message say?'

  'Hang on a minute…'

  'No, just…'

  She'd already gone. After a few seconds, Thorne heard the click of the button being hit and the noise of the tape rewinding. There was a pause and then a bang as she put the receiver down next to the machine.

  'It's coming up,' she shorted.

  Then a hiss as the tape began to play.

  There was no discernible accent, no real emotion of any sort, in the voice. To Thorne, it sounded as if someone was trying hard to sound characterless, but there was a hint of something like amusement in the voice somewhere. In the voice of the man Thorne had to assume was responsible for the bound and bloodied corpse not three feet away from him.

  The message began simply enough.

  'I'd like to order a wreath…'

  3 DECEMBER, 1975

  He inched the Maxi forward until the bumper was almost touching the garage door before yanking up the handbrake and turning off the ignition. He reached across for his briefcase, climbed out of the car, and nudged the door shut with his backside.

  Not six o'clock yet and already dark. Cold, as well. He was going to have to start putting his vest on in the mornings. As he walked towards the front door he began whistling it again, that bloody song he couldn't get out of his head. It was on the radio every minute of every day. What the hell was a 'silhouetto' anyway? Do the bloody fandango?

  The thing went on for hours as well. Weren't pop songs supposed to be short? '

  He shut the front door behind him and stood on the mat for a second, waiting for the smell of his dinner to hit him. He liked this moment every day, the one where he could pretend he was a character in one of those programmes on the TV. He stood and imagined that he was in the Midwest of America somewhere and not stuck in a shitty little estuary suburb. He imagined that he was a rangy executive with a perfectly presented wife who would have a pot-roast in the oven and a cocktail waiting for him. Highballs or something they called them, didn
't they?

  It wasn't just his little joke, it was theirs. Their silly ritual. He would shout out and she would shout back, then they would sit down and eat the frozen crispy pancakes or maybe one of those curries out of a packet with too many raisins in.

  'Honey, I'm home…'

  There was no reply. He couldn't smell anything. He dropped his briefcase by the hall table and walked towards the lounge. She probably hadn't had time today. Wouldn't have finished work until gone three and then she would have had shopping to do. There was only a fortnight until Christmas and there was loads of stuff still to get… The look on her face stopped him dead.

  She was sitting on the settee, wearing a powder-blue housecoat. Her legs were curled underneath her. Her hair was wet.

  "You all right, love?"

  She said nothing. As he took a step towards her, his shoe got tangled in something and he looked down and saw the dress.

  'What's this doing…?"

  He flicked it up and caught it, laughing, looking for a reaction. Then, letting the length of it drop from his fingers he saw the rip, waggled his fingers through the rent in the rayon.

  "Christ, what have you done to this? Bloody hell, this was fifteen quid's worth…"

  She looked up suddenly and stared at him as if he was mad. Trying not to make it obvious, he began looking around for an empty bottle, making an effort to keep a smile on his face.

  'Have you been to work today, love?"

  She moaned softly.

  'What about school? You did pick up…?'

  She nodded violently, her hair tumbling damp across her face. He heard the noise then from upstairs, the crash of a toy car or a pile of bricks coming from the loft they'd turned into a playroom.

  He nodded, puffed out his cheeks, relieved.

  'Listen, let's get you…'

  He had to stop himself taking a step back as she stood up suddenly, her eyes wide and wet, folding herself over slowly, as if she were taking a bow. He said her name then.

  And his wife gathered up the hem of the powder-blue housecoat and raised it above her waist to show him the redness, the rawness and the darker blue of the bruising at the top of her legs…

  TWO

  Thorne lost his bet with Phil Hendricks.

  He answered the phone barely four hours after they'd found We body and within a few seconds he was lobbing his half-eaten sandwich across the office, missing the bin by several feet. He chewed what was left in his mouth quickly, knowing that his appetite was about to disappear.

  Hendricks was calling from Westminster mortuary. 'Pretty quick,' he said. He sounded extremely chipper. 'You've got to bloody admit…'

  'Why do you always manage to do this when I'm eating lunch?

  Couldn't you have left it another hour?'

  'Sod that, mate, there's money at stake. Right, you ready? I'm going for time of death at somewhere around quarter to three in the morning.'

  Bollocks: Thorne stared out of the window at a row of low, grey buildings on the other side of the M1. He didn't know if the window was dirty or if that was just Hendon. 'This had better be worth a tenner. Go on…'

  'Right, how d'you want it? Medical jargon, layman's terms, or pathology-made-easy for thick-as-shit coppers?'

  'That's cost you half the tenner. Get on with it…'

  'Hendricks spoke about death and its intimacies with considerably less passion than he demonstrated for Arsenal FC. Being a Mancunian who didn't support the dreaded Man United was far from being the only V-sign he stuck up at convention. There were the clothes in varying shades of black, the shaved head, the ludicrous number of earrings. There were the mysterious piercings, one for each new boyfriend… He might have spoken dispassionately, almost matter-of-factly, but Thorne knew how much Phil Hendricks cared about the dead. How hard he listened to their bodies when they spoke to him. When they gave up their secrets.

  'Asphyxia due to ligature strangulation,' Hendricks said. 'Plus, I think it happened on the floor. He had carpet burns on both knees. I think the killer put the body on the bed afterwards. Posed it.'

  'Right…'

  'Unfortunately, I still can't tell for sure whether or not he was strangled before, after or during the sodomy.'

  'So, you're not perfect, then?'

  'I know one thing. Whoever did it has a big future in gay porn. Our killer's hung like a donkey. He did quite a bit of damage up there…'

  Thorne knew he'd been right to get rid of the sandwich. He'd lost count of the conversations like this he'd had with Hendricks over the years. His head was used to them, but his stomach still found them tricky.

  Thorne called it the H-plan diet…

  'What about secretions?'

  'Sorry, mate, bugger all. Only thing up there that shouldn't have been was a trace of spermicidal lubricant from the condom he was wearing. He was careful, in every sense…'

  Thorne sighed. 'Where's Holland? He still with you?'

  'No chance, mate. He shot away first chance he had. Why did you send him down anyway? Actually, I'm hurt you didn't want to watch me work.. "

  These conversations, the ones that followed bodies, always ended on something light-hearted. Football, pisstakes, anything…

  'DC Holland hasn't seen you work nearly enough though, Phil,'

  Thorne said. 'It still gives him the heebies. I'm doing him a favour, toughening him up…'

  Hendricks laughed. 'Right…'

  Right, Thorne thought. He knew very well that when it came to slabs and scalpels you never toughened up. You just pretended you had…

  Standing in the Incident Room, preparing to brief the team, Thorne felt, as he often did on these occasions, like a teacher who was feared but not particularly liked. The slightly psychotic PE teacher. These thirty or so people in front of him – detectives, uniformed officers, civilian and auxiliary staff-might just as well have been children. There were as many different types as could be found sitting in any draughty school hall in London, even as Thorne was speaking. There were those who appeared to be listening intently but would have to check with colleagues later to find out exactly what they were supposed to be doing. Some, on the other hand, would be over-keen, asking questions and nodding eagerly, with every intention of doing as little as possible when the time came. There were the bullies and the picked-upon. The swots and the morons.

  The Metropolitan Police Service. Service, note, with the emphasis on caring and efficiency. Thorne knew very well that most of the people in the room, himself on some occasions included, were happier back when they were a force.

  One to be reckoned with.

  It was four days since that first post-mortem conversation with Hendricks and if the pathologist had been quick, the team at Forensic Science Services had outdone him. Seventy-two hours for DNA results was really going some, especially when the crime scene was as much of a DNA nightmare as that hotel room had been. One notch up from a doss-house, it had yielded hair and skin samples from upwards of a dozen individuals, male and female. Then there were the cats and dogs and at least two other animal species as yet unidentified. And yet, incredibly, they'd found a match.

  They were no nearer finding the killer, of course, but now they were at least certain who his victim had been. The dead man's DNA had been on file, for a very good reason.

  Thorne cleared his throat, got a bit of hush. 'Douglas Andrew Remfry, thirty-six years of age, was released from Derby prison ten days ago, having served seven years of a twelve-year sentence for the rapes of three young women. We're putting together an accurate picture of his movements since then, but so far it locks like a pretty consistent shuttle between pub, betting shop, and the house in New Cross where he was living with his mother and her…?' Thorne looked across at Russell Brigstocke who held up three fingers. He turned back to the room. 'Her third husband. We'll hopefully have a lot more in terms of Remfry's movements and so on later today. DC's Holland and Stone are there at the moment with a search warrant. Mrs. Remfry was somewhat less than co
-operative…'

  An acnefied trainee detective near the front shook his head, his face screwed up in distaste for this woman he'd never met. Thorne gave him a good, hard stare. 'She's just lost a son,' he said. Thorne let his words hang there for a few seconds before continuing. 'If the landlady is to be believed, Remfry, unless his killer happens also to be his double, booked the room himself. He didn't feel the need to give a name, but he was happy enough to hand over the cash. We need to find out why. Why was he so keen to go to that hotel? Who was he meeting…?'