Lazybones tt-3

by Mark Billingham

  Thorne nodded. He remembered the case. He had no idea what Stone wanted to tell him.

  'So, they get hundreds of films handed in. They develop them all and go through the pictures. Thousands of them.' Stone picked up his glass, stared into it for a moment. 'The woman couldn't pick out the man she'd seen, but the police identified thirty known child-sex offenders. In one fucking weekend, on one beach. Thirty…'

  Stone drained his glass. 'Right. Toilet, I think…'

  Thorne watched Stone go, and drained his. He decided to leave the Corsa in the car park at Becke House. It was easy enough to get the tube home…

  The rest of the evening passed quickly and easily. Thorne had some success with a couple of his dad's jokes; Holland argued with Sophie on the phone, pulling faces for the lads, doing his best to laugh it off; nobody could choose between Vanessa Feltz and Esther Rantzen; Holland spoke to Sophie again, then turned his phone off; Thorne bet Hendricks ten pounds that Spurs were going to finish above Arsenal the following season; Hendricks had one Guinness too many and told Holland that several of his gay friends fancied him… Stone grabbed Thorne's arm as they were all stepping out into the clear, warm night. Saying their goodbyes.

  'Something else my mate told me. They arrested this one bloke who had all these pictures of kids off the Internet, you know? Downloaded them on to his computer, hundreds of them. He said that he was searching through all these pictures, looking at them all, at their faces, hoping that one day he might find the pictures of himself…'

  Thorne tried gently to pull away. Stone was squeezing his arm tightly.

  'That's rubbish, isn't it?' Stone said. 'That's bollocks. That's an excuse, don't you think? That's not really true, is it, sir…?'

  Thorne stepped through the front door into the communal hall he shared with the couple in the flat upstairs. The breath he let out was long and noisy. He picked up the post, sorted the bills from the pizza delivery menus, fumbled for his flat key.

  As soon as the door was open he knew. He could feel the breeze where there should be none. The scent of something carried on it… He moved quickly into his own, small hallway. The cat was rubbing itself against his shin. He put down his bag, dropped the letters on to the table next to the phone and stepped around the corner into the living room.

  He stared at the space where the video had been. Looked up at the dusty shelf he'd never bothered to paint, on which his sound system had sat. The leads were gone, which meant they'd obviously been in the place for a while. The ones who were in a hurry just ripped the spaghetti out of the back, left it still plugged in. He reached to pick up the few scattered paperbacks that had previously been held upright by his BOSE speakers. Clearly, whoever now had his speakers wasn't a great reader. They had taken every single CD…

  Fuckers would hand over his entire collection for a day's worth of smack.

  Thorne walked through to the kitchen, stared at the small window they'd climbed through. The window he'd left open. In a hurry two nights earlier, throwing his stuff for the wedding together and not locking up properly because he was rushing across to calm his fucking stupid father down…

  Aside from the obvious gaps, the place seemed pretty much as he'd left it. He guessed that there would be a suitcase or two missing from the wardrobe in the bedroom. Away out of the front door, casual as you like, as if they were taking something very heavy on their holidays. The smell hit him the second he opened the bedroom door, and Thorne had a pretty good idea where it was coming from. He moved his hand to cover his mouth, needing to unclench the fist as he did so. His first thought when he threw back the duvet was that it must have taken a good deal of skill to have done the job so accurately, smack in the centre of the bed.

  Thorne backed quickly out of the room, his guts bubbling. Elvis yowled at his feet; hungry, or keen to deny responsibility for the turd on the bed, one or the other. Thorne wondered if it was too late to ring his father and shout at him for a while.

  He looked at his watch. It was ten past twelve… He'd just turned forty-three.

  All through Sunday, every time he was beginning to enjoy himself he'd remembered the bloody message and become prickly, irritated. It had been there on his answering machine, waiting for him when he'd got back from Slough on Saturday night. He'd ignored it, collapsed exhausted into bed and played it back first thing the next morning. It was exactly what he did not need. It was spoiling things.

  He needed to deal with it.

  As he moved around his flat, dressing himself, he remembered the look on Welch's face when he'd walked into the hotel room. The face was the very best thing. Remfry's had been the same. It was the look that passes across the face of someone who thinks that they are about to get one thing, and then realises that they are in for an altogether different sort of experience.

  He wondered if they saw that expression on the faces of the women they raped.

  He didn't know the details of their particular offences, he didn't care. Rape was rape was rape. He did know that most attacks did not involve dark alleys and deserted bus stops. He knew that most rapists were known to their victims. Were trusted by them. Friends, colleagues, husbands… They would have seen that terrible realisation on the faces of the women they attacked. The horror and surprise. The very last thing they were expecting.

  The very last person they were expecting it from. He'd enjoyed watching that same expression distort the smug, expectant features on the faces of these men. He'd savoured it for a few Seconds before taking out the knife and the washing line…

  Creating an entirely new expression.

  He pulled on his jacket and picked up his keys. Checked himself in the mirror by the front door. He glanced down at the answering machine.

  He would definitely sort the message business out later.

  ELEVEN

  It was no more than a ten-minute walk from the tube station, but Thorne had a healthy sweat on by the time he reached Becke House. A figure loitered by the main doors, wreathed in cigarette smoke. Thorne was amazed when it turned round and revealed itself to be Yvonne Kitson.

  'Morning, Yvonne.'

  She nodded, avoiding his eye and blushing like a fourth-former caught fagging it behind the bike sheds. 'Morning…'

  Thorne pointed at the cigarette, almost burnt down to the butt. 'I didn't know you…'

  'Well, you do now.' She tried her best to smile and took another drag. 'Not quite so perfect, I'm afraid.. '

  'Thank Christ for that,' Thorne said.

  Kitson's smile got a little warmer. 'Oh, sorry. Was I starting to intimidate you?'

  'Well, not me, obviously. But I think one or two of the younger ones were a bit scared.' Kitson laughed, and Thorne saw that she was still carrying her bag across one shoulder. 'Have you not even been in yet?' he asked. She shook her head, blowing out smoke from the side of her mouth. 'Bloody hell, how stressed out can you possibly be then?' Kitson raised her eyebrows, looked at him like he didn't know the' half of it.

  They stood for a few seconds, looking in different directions, saying nothing. Thorne decided to make a move before they were forced to start discussing the hot weather. He put one hand on the glass doors…

  'I'll see you upstairs…' he said.

  'Oh shit.' Like she'd just remembered. 'Sorry to hear about the burglary…'

  Thorne nodded, shrugged and pushed through the doors. He trudged up the stairs, marveling at the incredible speed and efficiency of the Met's jungle drum system.

  A desk sergeant in Kentish Town, who knows a DC in Islington, who calls somebody at Colindale…

  Throw a few Chinese whispers into the mix and you had a culturally diverse ensemble of rumour, gossip and bullshit that outperformed any of the systems they actually used to fight crime… It took Thorne almost five minutes to get from one side of the Incident Room to the other. Running the gauntlet of digs and wisecracks. A cup of coffee from the reconditioned machine in the corner the prize that awaited him.

  'Sorry, mate…'
>
  'You look a bit rough, sir. Sleep on the sofa?'

  'Never done a crime prevention seminar, then, Tom?'

  'Many happy returns…' This was Holland.

  Thorne had wanted to keep it quiet. He'd deliberately said nothing in the pub the night before. He must have mentioned the date to Holland some time. 'Thanks.'

  'Not a very nice present to come home to. I mean the burglary, not…'

  'No. It wasn't.'

  'Somebody said they took your car…'

  'Is that a smirk, Holland?'

  'No, sir…'

  The night before. Thorne, hauling the mattress out through the front door when he remembered that he hadn't seen the Mondeo outside when he'd arrived home. He didn't recall seeing his car keys on the table as he'd come in either. He had been worrying about other things at the time…

  He dropped the mattress and stepped out into the street. Maybe he'd parked the car somewhere else.

  He hadn't. Fuckers…

  'Birthday drink in the Oak later, then?' Holland said. Thorne stepped past him, almost within reach of the coffee machine now. He turned and spoke quietly, reaching into his pocket for change. 'Just a quiet one, all right?'

  'Whatever…'

  'Not like last night. Just you and Phil, maybe.'

  'Fine…'

  'I might ask Russell if he fancies it…' I.

  'We can do it another day if you're not up for it.' '

  Thorne slammed his coins into the coffee machine. 'Listen, after dealing with the fallout from our second body, and spending luck knows how long I'm going to have to spend on the phone to house insurance companies and car insurance companies and whichever council department is responsible for taking shitty mattresses away, I think I might need a drink…'

  After Holland had gone, Thorne stood, sipping his coffee and staring at the large, white write-on/wipe-off board that dominated one wall of the room. Crooked lines scrawled in black felt-tip, marking out the columns and rows. Arrows leading away to addresses and phone numbers. The Actions for the day, each team member's duties allocated by the office manager. The names of those peripheral to the investigation. The names of those central to it: REMFRY, GRIBBIN, DODD…

  In a column all of its own: JANE FOLEY??

  And now a second name added beneath Dougie Remfry's, with plenty of empty space for more names below that one. The heading at the top of the column hadn't been altered yet. Nobody had thought to add an S to VICTIM, but they would.

  Thorne heard a sniff and turned to find Sam Karim at his shoulder.

  'How's the head?'

  Thorne glanced at him. 'What?'

  'After last night. I feel like shit warmed up…'

  'I'm fine,' Thorne said.

  Samir Karim was a large, gregarious Indian with a shock of thick silver hair and a broad London accent that was delivered at a hundred miles per hour. He planted half of his sizeable backside on to the edge of a desk. 'Fuck all off those tapes, by the way…'

  'Which tapes?'

  'CCTV tapes from the Greenwood.'

  Thorne shrugged, unsurprised.

  'Couple of possibles,' Karim said. 'But only from the back. The cameras only really cover the bar add the area around the desk and the lifts. You can walk in and go straight up the stairs without being seen at all, if you know where the cameras are…'

  'He knew where they were,' Thorne said.

  They stared at the board together for a moment or two. 'That's the difference between our team and all the others, isn't it?' Karim said.

  'They have a victim. We have a list…'

  There's a moment in film and TV shows, a particular shot, a cliche to signify that moment when the penny drops. For real people this means remembering where they've left their car keys, or the title of a song that's been annoying them. For the screen copper, it's usually a darker revelation. The instant that provides the break in the case. Then, when that pure and brilliant comprehension dawns, the camera zooms towards the face of the hero, crashing in quickly or sometimes creeping slowly up on them. Either way, it goes in close and it stays there, showing the light of realisation growing in the eyes…

  Thorne was not an actor. There was no nod of steely determination, no enigmatic stare. He stood holding his coffee cup, his mouth gaping, like a half-wit.

  A list…

  The certainty hit him like a cricket ball. He felt a bead of sweat surface momentarily from every pore in his body before retreating again. Tingling; hot, then cold.

  'Feeling OK, Tom?' Karim asked.

  Zoom in close and hold…

  Thorne didn't feel the hot coffee splashing across his wrist as he marched across the room, up the corridor and into Brigstocke's office. Brigstocke looked up, saw the expression on Thorne's face, put down his pen.

  'What…?'

  'I know how he finds them,' Thorne said. 'How he finds out where the rapists are…'

  'How?'

  'This could all be very simple. Our man might work for the prison service, or hang about in pubs around Pentonville and the Scrubs, hoping to get matey with prison officers, but I doubt it. At the end of the day, finding out where rapists are banged up isn't that hard. Families, court records… he could just go to newspaper archives and sift through the local rags if he felt like it…'

  'Tom…'

  Thorne stepped quickly forward, put his coffee cup down on Brigstocke's desk and began to pace around the small office. 'It's about what happens afterwards. It's about release dates and addresses. I had thought that maybe there was some connection with the families, but Welch was NFA. His family disowned him and moved away years ago.' He glanced across at Brigstocke as if he were making everything very obvious. Brigstocke nodded, still waiting. 'Release details are fluid, right? Prisoners move around, parole dates change, extra days get tagged on to sentences. The killer has to have access to up-to-date, accurate information…'

  'Do I have to phone a friend?' Brigstocke said. 'Or are you going to sodding well tell me? How does he find them?'

  Thorne allowed himself the tiniest flicker of a smile. 'The same way we do.'

  Behind his glasses Brigstocke blinked twice, slowly. The confusion on his face became something that might have been regret. Or the anticipation of it. 'The Sex Offenders Register.'

  Thorne nodded, picked up his coffee. 'Jesus, we need shooting

  'cause it took us this long…'

  Brigstocke took a deep breath. He began stepping slowly backwards and forwards in the space between the wall and the edge of the desk. Trying to take this vital, but daunting piece of new information on board. Trying to shape it into something he could handle. 'I don't need to say it, do I?' he said, finally.

  'What?'

  'About this not getting out…'

  Thorne looked up, past Brigstocke. The sun was moving behind a cloud but it was still baking in the tiny office. He could feel the sweat gathering in the small of his back. 'You don't need to say it.'

  'Not just because it's.., sensitive. Although it is.'

  Thorne knew that Brigstocke was right. The whole issue of the Register had been what the tabloids were fond of calling a 'political hot potato' for years. This was just the sort of thing to blow the whole 'naming and shaming' debate wide open again. When he looked back to Brigstocke, the DCI was smiling.

  'This might be the way we get him, though, Tom.'

  Thorne was counting on it…

  Brigstocke came around his desk. 'Right, let's start with the bodies that are informed about an offender's registration requirements. The ones that get fed the notification details as a matter of course.' He started to count them off on his fingers. 'Social services, probation…'

  'And us, of course,' Thorne said. 'We'd better not forget the most interesting one, had we, Russell?'

  Macpherson House was located in a side street off Camden Parkway. In the course of a century, the building had been a theatre, cinema and bingo hall. Now it was little more than a shell, within which was situated temp
orary hostel accommodation.

  'Fuck me gently,' Stone said. He was craning back his head, staring at the grimy, crumbling ceiling high above him. Holland looked up. There were still traces of gilt on the mouldings. Decorative swirls of plaster leaves trailed across the ceiling and then down towards four ornate columns in each corner of the vast room.

  'Must have been amazing…'

  There was a week-old copy of the Daily Star on the floor. Stone pushed it aside with his foot. He sniffed at the stale air and pulled a face. 'It's a bloody shame…'

  As they walked, Holland took Stone through the simple, ironic history of the place. The theatre that had become a cinema. The cinema done for in the seventies by the more popular entertainment of the bingo hall. The bingo hall itself made redundant thirty years later by the easy availability of scratch cards and the National Lottery.

  'From music hall to the Stupid Tax,' Holland said. Stone snorted. 'I take it those six numbers never came up, then?'

  'I'm still here, aren't I?'

  Their footsteps echoed off the scuffed, stone floors, else were muffled as they walked across the occasional threadbare rug, or curling square of carpet. 'Can't see what's going to replace the Lottery, can you. 7'

  Holland shook his head. 'Not as long as there's a call for it.'

  They were walking ten yards or so behind Brian, the hostel supervisor, a big man in his fifties with long, grey hair, a large hoop earring and a multicoloured waistcoat. Without turning round, he held out both arms. Taking in the place.

  'Always be a call for this, though…'

  Now, forty feet below the faded rococo grandeur, the space was taken up with cracked sinks and metal beds. A kitchen and a serving hatch. A pair of small televisions, each attached with a padlock and chain to nearby radiators. Behind the beds, along the walls, stood row upon row of scratched and dented lockers – some without locks, many without doors. All rusting and covered in graffiti.

  'Council got them for a song,' Brian said. 'When the swimming pool down the road was knocked down. Same week they got this place off Mecca…'