Lazybones tt-3

by Mark Billingham

  'Don't fucking touch her…'

  As Gribbin's hands slid across the girl's shoulders, Stone was halfway across the room. He was on him by the time Gribbin was reaching to pull the small, blond head to his barrel chest, the girl squealing as he pushed her away and turned to defend himself… Gribbin reached up and grabbed Stone around the collar, staggering back into the television which tipped against the wall. Stone brought both fists up fast into the thick, tattooed forearms and pulled them back down hard as he dropped his head into Gribbin's face. It was then that three pairs of hands grabbed Stone, around collar, belt and sleeve, yanking him backwards across the armchair as Gribbin dropped to his knees and the girl ran sobbing to her mother.

  Stone tried to stand up, to tell those around him that he was calm, that they could get their bloody hands off him… Thorne stepped across and knelt down next to Gribbin. His head had fallen back against the television, one hand scrabbling at the carpet, bailing itself into a fist. Blood dripped through the fingers of the other hand. On the screen behind Gribbin's head, there was applause as a woman welcomed viewers to her show and invited the studio audience to share their holiday nightmares. Twenty minutes later, with the inhabitants of the quiet cul-de-sac pressed against their windows, Gribbin was led out, a bloody handkerchief pressed to what was left of his nose.

  By teatime, the initial interviews had been completed. Heads were starting to hang. Though there were still a few things to check out, it was pretty clear, to Thorne at least, that Gribbin had got nothing whatsoever to do with the murder of Douglas Remfry.

  *****

  The phone rang just before eleven. The voice could have belonged to only one person.

  'I think you might have had a bit of luck, Mr. Thorne.'

  'I'm listening, Kodak.'

  'Well, don't get too excited, because whatever happens we've got to wait a few days, but… it looks good. Remember me joking about doing your job for you?'

  Thorne listened. It did sound very promising, but after the fiasco with Gribbin he found it difficult to get excited. It was hard to see any thing as more than just another straw to be clutched at. He went into the bedroom and lay down.

  It was starting to get cooler.

  Beneath him, the bracken felt sodden, and above, the sky was darkening.

  3 AUGUST, 1976

  'You smell. You smell like death. You fucking stink.. Her eyes showed nothing. Not hurt at the accusation, not denial, not pain at the weight of him pressed down on to her arms, his face inches from her own.

  He pushed himself off her, moved down to the end of the bed to where the tray had been left untouched.

  'I'm fucking sick of this.' he said. 'You want to starve yourself that's up to you, but don't make me cook the shit for you, all right?'

  She raised herself up on the pillow, stared past him.

  'What?' he said, shouted. 'What?"

  He looked at her for a minute or more. Her face was, as always, blank enough for him to imagine it changing, to create the expression that he knew should be there as large as life. To picture the eyes dropping, the tightness around the lips, and the clenching of the jaw. To see Shane.

  He grabbed the plate and hurled it against the wall above her head. She didn't flinch. She didn't blink.

  He stopped in the doorway, turned and stared at her. Her eyes flat as glass. Beans running down the wall behind her.

  'In court they tried to make out that if you had been raped it was like you were asking for it anyway. The dress, other things. They just meant the way you behaved, like you were flirting, coming on to him. They didn't know the half of it, did they? You did ask for it. I know what you did. You literally asked him for it. Took him, dragged him into that fucking stockroom and asked him. Told him what you wanted…'

  As he closed the bedroom door behind him, he could hear her saying the word over and over again.

  'If…if..if..'

  She could not hear herself saying it. The sound of the screaming inside her head was all she'd been able to hear for a while.

  EIGHT

  Thorne turned right off the Charing Cross Road. Eleven o'clock in the morning or thereabouts and baking hot. He took off his jacket, threw it across his arm as he began walking up Old Compton Street. Soho was a difficult area to categorise at the best of times, which had probably been its trouble down the years. Was it bohemian or squalid? Characterful or seedy? Thorne knew that today it was all these things and probably the better for it, but it had been a struggle. Four decades on and the villains that had run Soho in the fifties and sixties had become trendy. Thanks to the new wave of British gangster films, Billy Hill, Jack Spot and their boys, with their sharp suits and slicked-back hair, were now officially iconic. For all their newfound sexiness, it was these men and those who followed in the seventies who had driven the resident population of the area away, who had silenced the noisy heart of it.

  It was thanks mainly to the gay population that Soho's heart had begun to beat again. Now it was one of the few areas in the centre of the city with a real sense of community; a sense that the horrific bombing of the Admiral Duncan pub a few years earlier had only strengthened. Though Thorne had not felt totally comfortable on the few occasions Phil Hendricks had brought him down here drinking, he couldn't deny that there was a good atmosphere to the place. Thorne walked past Greek Street, Frith Street. The Prince Edward Theatre and the awning of Ronnie Scott's off to his right. Young men sat outside cafes, enjoying the hot weather, the chance to show off well-developed bodies. Soho was still a great place to eat and drink, but for every Bar Italia there was a Starbucks or a Costa Coffee; for every family-run deli, two branches of Pret A Manger… Thorne suddenly felt hungry and realised that he had a problem. He knew that he didn't have time to grab an early lunch, but he also knew that if he ate any later he would run the risk of spoiling dinner, and he was really looking forward to that…

  'Well, we might as well,' Eve had said when he'd called. 'We've already had breakfast and lunch…'

  On the corner of Dean Street was a shop selling fetish wear. Thorne stopped and looked at the garish window display. A dummy was clad in rubber. A spiked dog-collar around the neck and a gas mask obscuring the face. He thought about the photographs of Jane Foley; the reason he was here.

  He looked at his watch. He was going to be late…

  'Did you really look at this photo?' Bethell had asked on the phone.

  'What?'

  Bethell sounded cocky, pleased with himself 'Study it, you know…'

  Thorne was not in the best of humours. 'I'm tired and I've had a shit day, so get on with it, will you…?'

  'I mean really look at it, Mr. Thorne. In one of your labs or whatever.

  Get it on to some state-of-the-art magnifying equipment, break it down into pixels…'

  'This is the Met, Kodak. I haven't even got a fan in my fucking office…'

  'I've got some good gear indoors. I use it for airbrushing, you know?

  Stuck it on there and bingo!

  'What…?"

  'The picture's shot against a plain white backdrop, all right? Sheet on a roller, usual kind of thing. Now, there's a small mark bottom right-hand corner, looks like a smudge, remember?'

  'No, I don't…'

  Thorne turned right, then immediately left into Brewer Street. This, more than anywhere in Soho, was where you could see the sleazy and the sophisticated cheek by jowl. The peep show next door to the sushi bar. A place that offered shiatsu massage opposite premises delivering an altogether more intimate type of service.

  A bored blonde in a cubicle beckoned him, inviting him into a show that promised a 'live double act'. Thorne wondered if there were any shows that offered dead ones.

  'Come on in, love,' the woman said. Thorne smiled and shook his head. She looked like she didn't give a toss. Of course, the sex industry had always been just that, had always been about the money, but Thorne had known hookers who did a better job of disguising it. He'd only ever read about
his favourite hooker of all time, but he would have liked to have met her. A legendary whore called Miss Corbett wh0'd worked these streets in the eighteenth century, and had surcharged her gentlemen an extra guinea for every inch that their 'maypole' fell below the nine inches she deemed satisfactory.

  Two hundred and fifty years on and now it was the drugs squad, not vice, who worked these streets every night. The sniffer dogs did what they'd been trained to do but Thorne thought it was pretty much a waste of time and effort. A lot of hard work and resources to nail the odd casual user, the occasional tin-pot dealer if they had a bit of luck…

  'You know you're always saying how you need a bit of luck sometimes?'

  Thorne had stretched out on the sofa by now, the phone pressed to his ear, the other hand reaching down to rub Elvis's belly. 'Are you ever going to get to the point, Kodak?'

  'Well, this is it. Your bit of good luck. I scanned the photo into my computer, blew it up big time, OK? You can do all sorts of stuff if the quality of the original's decent enough, yeah?' Thorne would have said it was impossible, but Bethell's voice was actually getting that little bit higher as he got more excited. 'So, I pixelated the bastard, zoomed in, and then I could suddenly see what that brown smudge was. I recognised it, see.'

  'Recognised it?'

  'It's a burn mark, like a scorch on the white backcloth. I recognised it 'cause I was there when it happened. I was shooting a threesome nine months back and some silly tart, done a couple of pills too many, knocks over a big lamp. Fucking whole lot could have gone up, but all it did was leave this big burn mark up the roller. I remembered the shape of it. Tight fucker that runs the place never bothered to replace it…'

  By now Thorne was sitting up. 'Tight fucker's name and address would be good.'

  'Charles Dodd. Charlie, really, but he insists on Charles. Likes to pretend he's posh, even 'though the cunt comes from Canvey Island…'

  'Kodak…'

  'The place is above a fishmonger's on Brewer Street.'

  Thorne knew the shop. 'Right, listen…'

  'You'll have to wait a few days I'm afraid, Mr. Thorne. He's in Europe. I checked.'

  Thorne was thinking it through. Should he wait? Could he get a warrant and turn the place over while Dodd was away…?

  'I think I did a pretty good job, Mr. Thorne,' Bethell said. 'What d'you reckon?'

  'I want to know the second he's back…'

  Now, three days since that conversation, Thorne watched Dennis Bethell in the bookshop on the other side of the street. He was browsing through the remaindered art books, though some of his own, slightly racier stuff was almost certainly on sale downstairs.

  Thorne moved to cross the road and was bumped roughly by a man coming fast, from his left. Thorne's response was typically British. 'Sorry,' he said. The other man grunted, raised a hand and carried on walking.

  Bethell was waving at him now from inside the bookshop. Thorne nodded towards the other end of the street and began walking. Bethell put down a coffee-table book of nude freak-show photographs, squeezed out of the shop doorway, and followed. Welch laughed as he strolled away up Wardour Street. He'd learned a few things during the years he'd spent in various institutions. Never say sorry was one. How to recognise a copper was another…

  Since his release he'd spent a lot of the time just walking around. The hostel was depressing, and he'd really enjoyed being out and about. The weather was amazing; a couple of days out in the open and he'd already got a bit of colour back. If he looked better, less prison pale, he thought that the women who were walking about, wearing next to nothing, looked gorgeous. Seriously horny. Fuck it, if this was global warming then who gave a toss about the ozone layer?

  There were windows all along the street with adverts in each for a new film. Welch stopped and looked at a couple that he liked the sound of. Maybe when his dole money came through he might spend a couple of afternoons catching up. He'd enjoyed the cinema before he'd gone inside, tried to see most of the stuff that came out, providing it wasn't too arty.

  He'd been to the pictures the night before he was arrested of course. The Blair Witch Project. She'd been all over him then, snuggling up in the scary bits, hand on his knee all the way through. Well up for it, she was. He could read the signals. It was only later that the bitch decided to change her mind. To fuck him around.

  To this day, it amazed him that they could do that. Take a bloke all the way there, get him worked up, get him so as his bollocks felt like they'd explode and then just turn around and casually announce that they didn't feel like it. That it was too much too soon, or some such crap. He'd decided that it was crap, that she just didn't want him to think she was a slag. That all she needed was a little persuasion… He'd been gobsmacked when the police had come knocking the next afternoon. Couldn't fucking believe it. He was still shaking his head while they were taking the swabs.

  He could see that the male copper, the detective sergeant, thought it was rubbish, that they were all wasting their time. When he'd told them how randy the silly bitch had been in the cinema, he was nodding, for fuck's sake. He could see exactly what had been going on. The woman officer was different, though; she'd had it in for him straightaway.

  'Good at reading signals, are you?' she'd said. Her expression blank, the spools on the tape squeaking as they turned in the recorder. 'Tell me what I'm thinking right now…'

  'That you'd fancy me if you weren't a dyke?'

  Looking into the window, he saw himself smile, remembering her face when he'd said it. The smile faded a little when he recalled the look on the same face eight months later; the grin from the other side of the courtroom as he was taken down.

  He moved on to the next window. There was a poster advertising the new Bruce Willis blockbuster. Some new missile and Bruce's cheeky smile and a tasty blonde with fake tits. Maybe next week, the week after, whenever he started getting the dole cheques, he might go and see it. He couldn't afford it just yet. The discharge grant wasn't going to stretch much further and besides, he'd need a fair bit tomorrow night, to pay for the hotel.

  'You sure he's in there?'

  'He's in there, Mr. Thorne. Got back from Holland yesterday. Went over to pick up a few bits and pieces.'

  Thorne nodded. Flowers weren't the only thing that came across from Holland in vans…

  They were standing across the road from the fishmonger's, the flashing neon sign above Raymond's Revue Bar reflected in the shop window. The reds and blues dancing across the shiny heads of salmon, herring and turbot. Next to it, a narrow brown door. Bethell forced his hands into the pockets of tight leather trousers. Shifted his weight from one expensive training shoe to the other.

  'Right, I'll get out of your way then, shall I?'

  Thorne reached for his wallet, wondering if the tightness of Bethell's trousers might have something to do with the height of his voice. He counted out fifty in tenners. Bethell took it and handed over an envelope in return.

  'There's your photo back…'

  Thorne took a step into the road, turned and held up the envelope.

  'I'd better not see this popping up on the Internet, all right?'

  Bethell laughed. A series of shrill peeps. 'I didn't know you visited those sorts of sites…' Thorne was already starting to cross. 'Listen, you won't mention my name, will you…?'

  Thorne stopped to let a car pass, spoke without turning. 'Oh, so I can't say, "Dennis sent me, then?'.

  'Relax, Kodak. Your reputation will remain squeaky clean. No pun intended…'

  Thorne pressed the button on the grimy, white intercom and stepped back. He glanced up at an unmoving grey curtain, and right, into the black eye of a large, ugly-looking fish he couldn't put a name to. The shop front was original, the tiling that edged the window ornate, but the prices and stock were firmly in line with the twenty-first-century trendiness of the location. Swordfish steaks at a river a pop, and not a whelk to be seen…

  'Yes…?"

  'Mr. Dodd? I was
wondering if I could talk to you about renting some studio time…?

  Thorne could hear suspicion in every crackle of the speaker. He looked back at the ugly fish, found himself raising his eyebrows. What d'you reckon?

  He was buzzed up.

  Charlie Dodd stood at the top of a narrow, carpetless stairway. He was in his fifties with thin lips and a comb-over. He smiled, barring the way and trying to make it look like a welcome.

  By the time Thorne had reached the top of the stairs, warrant card in hand, the smile had become a grimace.

  'Have you got a warrant?'

  'I don't need one, you invited me up.'

  'Listen, you obviously aren't one of DCI Davey's boys. Everything's been sorted…'

  Plenty of things in Soho were still the same forty years on. Thorne made a mental note of the name as he stepped past Dodd and pushed open an unpainted plywood door.

  Dodd scuttled after him. 'What the fuck's your game…?'

  The studio was no bigger than an average double bedroom and the main feature was indeed a double bed. Unlike the average bedroom, the walls were painted black, there were lights hung from a ceiling bar, and Thorne guessed that the array of sex toys and costumes on display was only likely to be replicated in the bedrooms of a few high-ranking Members of Parliament…

  A man turned from the foot of the bed, lifted a large video camera down from his shoulder. Behind him, a foot or so away from the bedstead, Thorne could see the white backdrop with the burn mark in the bottom right-hand corner.

  Two thin, pale girls lay on the bed. One pulled her arm from beneath the other and reached down to pick up a packet of cigarettes from the floor. The other stared at him, her face blank and white as new paper.

  'What's this?' the man with the camera said.

  Thorne smiled. 'Don't mind me…'

  Dodd raised a placatory hand to the cameraman and turned to Thorne. 'Now listen, there's nothing illegal going on here, so why don't you sod off?.'

  'What about the stuff you've just brought back from Holland, Charlie?' Thorne stepped forward and steered Dodd into the corner of the room. 'Sorry, I know you prefer Charles…'