Lazybones tt-3

by Mark Billingham

  She reached down for the pass-key card hanging from a curly, plastic chain around her waist…

  There was a tune going through her head. The song that had woken her on the clock-radio, a present from her Nan when the exams had finished. The song was very old fashioned, just a singer and a guitar, but the tune had stayed with her all morning. She eased the card into the lock and slid it out again. The light below the handle turned green. She pushed down and leaned against the door…

  From the corner of her eye, she saw someone coming towards her along the corridor. It looked like one of the snotty old cows that ran housekeeping. She couldn't be sure' because the woman's face was all but hidden behind an enormous arrangement of lilies. Turning sideways, she eased open the door with her hip. The Hoover was kicked across the threshold, left to hold the door ajar while she turned back to the trolley to grab her other bits and pieces…

  Two months later, Fiona would be offered her chance, her place on the drama course in Manchester, but she would not take it up. Not that September, at any rate. She would get her two Bs and a C but it would not mean a great deal to her. Two months later, her mother would remove the slip of paper from the envelope and read out the results and try to sound excited, but her daughter would still not be hearing very much. The scream that had torn through her body eight weeks earlier would still be echoing in her head and drowning out pretty much everything.

  The sound of a scream and a picture of herself, of a young girl stepping through a doorway and turning. Faced with a peculiar kind of filth. Stains that she could never hope to remove with the bleaches and the waxes and the cloths which spill from a bucket, tumbling noisily to the bedroom floor.

  It wasn't much past ten yet, but Thorne was already starting to wonder what the lunchtime special at the Royal Oak might be, when the middle-aged woman walked into his office.

  'I'm looking for DC Holland,' she said.

  She'd marched in without knocking, so Thorne wasn't keen from the kick-off, but he tried to be as nice as he could. The woman was short and dumpy, probably pushing sixty. She reminded him a bit of his Auntie Eileen, and he suddenly had a good idea who she was.

  'Oh, right, are you Dave's…?'

  The woman cut him off and, as she spoke, she dragged a chair from behind Kitson's desk, plonked it in front of Thorne's and sat self down.

  'No, I'm not. I'm Carol Chamberlain. Ex-DCI Chamberlain from AMRU…'

  Thorne reached for a pen and paper to take notes, thinking, Fucking Crinkey Squad, all I need. He leaned across the desk and proffered a hand. 'DI Thorne…'

  Ignoring the hand, Carol Chamberlain opened her briefcase and began to rummage inside. 'Right. You'll do even better. I only asked for Holland' – she pulled out a battered green folder covered in yellow Post-It notes, held it up – 'because his was the name.., attached to this.'

  Emphasising the last word, she dropped the folder down on to Thorne's desk.

  Thorne glanced at the file and held up his hands. He tried his best to sound pleasant as he spoke. 'Listen, is there any chance we can do this another time? We're up to our elbows in a very big case and…'

  'I know exactly what case you're up to your elbows in,' she said.

  'Which is why we should really do it now.'

  Thorne stared at her. There was a steel in this woman's voice that suggested it would not be worth his while to argue. With a sigh, he pulled the folder across the desk, began to leaf through it.

  'Five weeks ago, DC Holland pulled the file on an unsolved murder from 1996.' Aside from the steel, her voice had the acquired refinement that often came with rank, however distant, but Thorne thought he detected the remnants of a Yorkshire accent beneath. 'The victim's name was Alan Franklin. He was killed in a car park. Strangled with washing line.'

  'I remember,' Thorne said. He flicked a couple of pages over. It was one of the cases Holland had pulled off CRIMINT. 'There were a couple of these that we looked at and then dismissed. Nothing suggested that…'

  Chamberlain nodded, dropped her eyes to the folder. 'This was handed to me as a cold case. My first cold case, as it happens…'

  'I read about the initiative. It's a good idea.'

  'I've been looking at the Franklin murder again…'

  'Right…' Thorne stopped, noticing the faintest trace of enjoyment then, another tiny line around her mouth that cracked open for just half a second and was gone. It was enough to prompt a reaction in him, a flutter of something that began, as always, at the nape of his neck…

  'Alan Franklin should have been known to us, to those who were investigating his murder back in '96. His name should have come up on a routine check…'

  Thorne knew there was no need to ask why. He knew she was about to tell him. He watched, and listened, and felt the tingle grow and spread around his body.

  'In May 1976, Franklin stood trial at Colchester Crown Court. He was accused of rape. Accused and acquitted.'

  Thorne caught a breath, let it out again slowly. 'Jesus…'

  Like a beam of light in the right direction… Later, when Thorne and the woman he'd thought was Dave Holland's mother knew and liked each other better, Carol Chamberlain would confess to him that this was one of those rare moments she'd missed more than anything. The seconds looking at Thorne, just before she revealed the most significant fact of all. When she'd had to fight very hard to stop herself grinning.

  'Alan Franklin was accused of raping a woman named Jane Foley…'

  PART THREE

  HARM' S WAY

  The grunting seemed to be coming from somewhere very deep down. A noise of effort and of immense satisfaction. Rising up from his guts and exploding, carried on hot breath from between dirty, misshapen teeth. Beneath these animal sounds – dog-noise, monkey-noise, pig-noise – the counterpoint provided by the dull slapping of hot flesh against cold as he pushes himself harder, again and again.

  Refusing to speed up. Giving no sign that it might soon be over. Taking his pleasure. Inflicting his pain.

  How was this allowed to happen? Naivety and trust had proved to be perfect complements to frustration and hatred. It had happened in moment. How long ago was that? Fifteen minutes? Thirty?

  There seems little point in struggling. It will be over eventually, it must be. No point in thinking about what happens afterwards. Probably a shy smile, maybe an apology and a cigarette and a speech about signals and crossed wires.

  Fucker. Fucker. Fucker.

  Until then…

  Eyes that cannot bear to stay open, shut tight and a new picture presents itself Small at first, and far away. Posed, waiting in a distant circle of light at the end of a tunnel.

  Now it is the grunting and the slapping that begin to recede into the distance as the picture gets closer, rushing up the tunnel, sucking up the darkness until it is fully formed and clearer than it has ever been.

  Clearer even than it ever really was. The colours more vivid: the red wetness against the white shirt; the cobalt-blue of the rope's coils around the neck like an exotic snake at his throat. The sounds and smells of the body and the rope, deafening and pungent. Creaking and fecal. The feeling: the unique horror of seeing it. Seeing the indescribable pain in 'those eyes at being seen.

  Then, at the end, watching it. Sensing something struggle to escape, and finally float free, up and away from the body that twirls slowly at the end of a frayed and oily rope.

  SEVENTEEN

  It was as grim a story of broken bodies and bruised lives as Tom Thorne had ever heard…

  A week since Carol Chamberlain had sat in Thorne's office had blown everything wide open. Holland was at the wheel of a car-pool Laguna as they drove into Essex, heading towards Braintree. The two men were comfortable enough with each other to let silences fall between them, but today's was particularly heavy. Thorne could only hope that what was in Holland's head was a sight less dark than what was in his own.

  As grim a story…

  Jane Foley was raped by Alan Franklin. Thor
ne was convinced of it, though if it had not been proved then, there was very little chance that the truth would emerge over twenty-five years on. What nobody doubted, then or now, were the bizarre and brutal actions taken by her husband, Dennis. What he had done to Jane, and then to himself, on the afternoon of 10 August, 1976.

  Thorne would probably never know for certain exactly what had gone on in that house, what had passed between those two people and led to those last, intimate moments of horror. Thorne did know that he would spend a good deal of time imagining those moments: the terror of Jane Foley as her husband draws near to her; the guilt and the anguish and the fear of a man who has just committed murder; the blood not yet dry on his hands, the tow rope slippy with it as he fashions a makeshift noose.

  Worst of all, the incomprehension of the two children, finding the bodies of their parents…

  Thorne started slightly as Holland smacked his palms against the wheel. He opened his eyes to see that they'd run into a line of slow moving traffic. Ever since they'd come off the M 11 it had been snarled up. Mid-morning on a Saturday and no good reason for the jam, but it was there all the same.

  'Shit,' Holland said. It was the first word either of them had spoken in nearly an hour.

  If Thorne was going to spend time thinking about what had happened between Jane and Dennis Foley, he was also going to be dwelling on something equally as painful. Something that, God help him, might have been responsible for horrors all of its own. Thorne had fucked up. He had fucked up as badly as he could remember and, for him, that was saying something… Carol Chamberlain had presumed that the officers working on the Franklin murder in 1996 had also fucked up. It looked as if they'd failed to check Franklin's name against the General Registry at Victoria, which would have revealed his part in the Jane Foley rape case twenty years before that.

  In fact, it was a matter of record that those officers had phoned the General Registry. What was not a matter of record, what would have to remain conjecture, was that the brain-dead pen-pusher on the other end of the phone – a man long-since retired and, Thorne hoped, long since dead – had missed Franklin's name. One eye on his crossword as the other had simply skipped past it. It had been a costly mistake. But Thorne's had been costlier.

  Unlike the officers in 1996, Thorne had not checked. Jane Foley's name had never been run past the General Registry, had never been put through the system. Strictly speaking, it had not been Thorne's job to do it, but that didn't matter. As far as Thorne was concerned, he carried the can. He never made sure, and even if he had thought of it, it would not have struck him as important.

  Why would they need to check out the name of a woman who didn't really exist? Jane Foley was the made-up name of a made-up person, wasn't it? Jane Foley was a fantasy… Thorne knew very well that if they.., he… anyone had checked, made one simple phone call after they'd found Remfry's letters, that Ian Welch might still be alive. As might Howard Anthony Southern… The traffic had begun to move again. Holland yanked the gearstick down, took the car up into second. 'I wouldn't mind, but there's never a decent bloody pile-up at the end of it…'

  The body of the third victim had been discovered, in a hotel in Roehampton, at around the same time as the woman from the Crinkey Squad had walked into Thorne's office and dropped her very welcome bombshell. She had still been there when the call came through and Thorne had invited her along to the murder scene. It had seemed the very least he could do.

  In that hotel room, with SOCO's and pathologists and an honest-to goodness body, Thorne had thought that, even standing in the background as she was, Carol Chamberlain had looked as happy as a kid in a sweet factory…

  In the days that followed, the investigation had begun to move forward in two distinct directions. While the latest victim was being processed, and the change in the pattern of the killings was being looked at, Thorne and those closest to him had begun to work on a new front. They would be chasing the major new lead that Carol Chamberlain had given them.

  Holland steered the car into an ordinary-looking road lined with drab sixties houses, and spindly trees which didn't help a great deal.

  They'd managed to snaffle one of the few team vehicles with air conditioning and the street felt like a sauna as they stepped out of the car. They pulled on their jackets, grimacing. As they walked towards Peter Foley's house, Thorne thought about leads. Why on earth did they talk about 'chasing' them? He wondered if it was because, no matter how inanimate they were, or how quick you thought you might be, some had a nasty habit of getting away from you.

  Dennis Foley's younger brother, the only surviving relative of either Dennis or Jane they had yet been able to trace, was not the most gracious of hosts.

  Thorne and Holland sat perched on the edge of stained velour armchairs, sweating inside jackets they had not been encouraged to take off. Opposite them on a matching sofa, Peter Foley sprawled in baggy shorts and a loud Hawaiian shirt, open to the waist. He clutched a can of cold lager which, when he wasn't drinking from it, he rolled back and forth across his skinny chest.

  'You were, what, eleven years younger than Dennis?' Holland said. Foley swallowed a mouthful of beer. 'Right, I was the mistake.'

  'So when it happened you'd have still been a student?'

  He shook his head. 'Nope. Least you could do is get your facts right. I was twenty-two in seventy-six. I'd left college the year before…' His accent was pure Essex, the voice high, and a little wheezy.

  'And you were doing what?' Thorne asked.

  'I was doing fuck all. Bumming around, being a punk. I did a bit of roadying for The Clash at one point…'

  Thorne had been a punk as well, though he was six years younger than Foley, who was pushing fifty. The man sitting opposite him certainly didn't look like he listened to 'White Riot' much any more. He was skinny, though his arms were well muscled; worked on, Thorne guessed, to better display the Gothic tattoos. His graying hair was tied back in a ponytail and the wispy beard teased into a point. From the look of him, and the copies of Kerrang! tossed under the coffee table, Thorne figured that Peter Foley was something of an ageing heavy metal fan.

  'What do you think happened to Jane?' Thorne said. Foley lifted himself up, pulled a pack of Marlboros from his shorts pocket and sank back down again. 'What? You mean when Den…?'

  'Before that. With Franklin.'

  'Fucker raped her, didn't he.' It wasn't a question. He lit his cigarette.

  'He'd have gone down for it as well if it wasn't for you fucking lot…'

  Holland bridled a little, opened his mouth, but Thorne cut across him. 'What do you mean, Mr. Foley?' Thorne knew exactly what Foley meant and he knew that he was right. The force, back then, was not exactly famed for the sensitivity with which it treated rape victims.

  'You get the transcripts of that trial, mate. Have a look at some of the things they said about Jane in court. Made her sound like a total slag. Especially that copper, talking about what she was wearing..-.'

  'It was handled badly,' Thorne said. 'Back then a lot of rapists got off, simple as that. I'm sure you're right about what happened to Jane, about Franklin.'

  Foley took a drag, then a drink, and leaned back, nodding. He looked across at Thorne, like he was re-evaluating him. Thorne glanced at Holland. Time to move on. As far as the interview went, they hadn't worked out a system – who would ask what, who was going to take the lead – they never did. Holland did the writing. That was about as far as it went.

  'Did you know that Alan Franklin was dead?' Holland said. 'He died in 1996.'

  Now it was Thorne's turn to do the evaluating. He studied Foley's face, trying to read the reaction. All he saw, or thought he saw, was momentary shock, and then delight.

  'Fucking good,' Foley said. 'I hope it was painful.'

  'It was. He was murdered.'

  'Even better.: Who do I send a thank-you letter to?'

  Thorne stood up and began to wander about. Foley was getting altogether too comfortable. Thorne wa
s not considering the man to be a suspect, not at the moment anyway, but he always preferred his interviewees on the back foot…

  'Why do you think he did it, Peter?' Thorne said. 'Why did Dennis kill her?' Foley stared back at him, sucked his teeth. He emptied the last of the lager into his mouth and crushed the can in his hand.

  Thorne repeated the question. 'Why did your brother kill his wife?'

  'How should I know?'

  'Did he believe what they said about Jane in court?'

  'I don't…'

  'He must have thought about it at least…'

  'Den thought about a lot of things.'

  'Did he think his wife wag a slag?'

  'Course he fucking didn't…'

  'Maybe they had problems in bed afterwards..'

  Foley leaned forward suddenly, dropped the empty can at his feet.

  'Listen, Jane went weird afterwards, all right? She had a breakdown. She stopped going out, stopped talking to anyone, stopped doing anything at all. She was mates with this girl I was seeing at the time, you know, we all used to go out together, but after the trial, no… after the rape, she just wasn't there any more. Den pretended like everything was fine, but he was bottling it all up. He always did. So, when Franklin walked out of that court like Nelson fucking Mandela, like he'd been the victim…'

  Thorne watched as Foley leaned back, Jell back on the sofa and began to spin one of the half-dozen silver rings on the fingers of his left hand.

  'Look, I don't know what Den thought, all right? He said some mad stuff at the time, but he was all over the place. They make you doubt things, don't they? That was their job in that court, to make the jury doubt, and they did a bloody good job. I mean, you're supposed to trust the police, aren't you, to believe them…?'

  Foley looked up and across at Holland, then turned to look at Thorne. For the first time he looked his age. Thorne looked at the cracks across Peter Foley's face, saw hard drugs in his past and perhaps even in his present.