Lazybones tt-3

by Mark Billingham

  'Apart from anything else,' Thorne said, 'murderers aren't doing the rainforests a whole lot of good.'

  Kitson looked up and across at him. 'Sorry?'

  He picked up a sheaf of post-mortem reports and waved them. She nodded her understanding.

  'How's it going, Yvonne?'

  'We won't have any more luck finding him as Noble than we did as Foley. He was only Mark Noble for five minutes, anyway…'

  'Which he'd have hated. That man's name…'

  'Too bloody right. If I was him I'd've changed my name, or at least stopped using that one, as soon as I got the hell out of there.'

  Thorne could find nothing in what Kitson had said to argue with. He'd have gone to Brigstocke straight away, suggested they concentrate their resources somewhere else. But he didn't have the faintest idea where…

  'Let's just plough through it,' he said.

  The whole adoption/abuse/runaway lead was shaping up to be another one of those which came to nothing horribly quickly. It was hard enough trying to work out what might have happened to someone who'd run away from home six months before. To piece together the theoretical movements of a pair of teenagers who'd vanished from a house in Romford nearly twenty years earlier, was almost certainly impossible.

  They had little choice but to try, and while Holland, Stone and the rest of the team did what they could, Thorne was going back over everything they already had. Sure that they already had enough. By lunchtime, he'd found nothing, and felt as though he'd read about every murder that had ever taken place. He'd watched the hands of the pathologist rooting about in every chest cavity and down into the cold, wet depths of every gut. He'd listened to the less than helpful words of everybody who'd so much as stood at the same bus stop as one of the victims.

  He'd had a belly full…

  'What's on your sarnies today, then?'

  Kitson shook her head without looking up from her computer screen. 'Didn't have time today. The kids were playing up, and everything got a bit…' The rest of the sentence hung there until Thorne spoke.

  'You can't keep all the balls in the air all the time, Yvonne. You're allowed to drop one occasionally, you know.' Kitson glanced up, gave him a thin smile. 'Is everything all right, Yvonne?'

  'Has somebody said something?' It came a little too quickly.

  'No. You've just seemed a bit.., out of it.'

  Kitson's smile thickened, until she looked, to Thorne, much more like herself. Much more the type he could lob a ball of paper at.

  'I'm just tired,' she said.

  This next killing had to be the last one, at least for a while. It made a pretty picture, and it also made bloody good sense. Afterwards, the police investigation was bound to be stepped up, and the risk of getting caught, just statistically, would increase. '

  If he were to be caught, to be tried for his crimes, the next killing would be a very bad one to get done for. He would certainly be crucified with little argument. Now, though, with just the others under his belt, it would be something of a different matter. Standing trial for the murders of Remfry and Welch and Southern, he would fancy his chances…

  If the papers were excited at the manhunt, they would be wetting themselves at a court case. The tabloids would back him, he was sure of it. He could probably even persuade one or other of the red-tops to stump up for his defence, pay to hire a top lawyer. He had decided already that should it ever come to it, he would speak in his own defence, would stand up and tell them exactly what he'd done and why. He was pretty confident that only a very brave judge would put him away for too long after that.

  There would be an outcry from certain sections for sure, from the misguided and the bleeding hearts. From those who believed he should pay his debt to society, in the same way that those fine, upstanding citizens he'd killed had once done.

  That would be all right with him. Let the silly bastards protest. Let them take the words 'perversion' and 'justice', and put them together like they owned them, even though they hadn't got the least fucking idea what either of them could really mean.

  Perversion and justice. The degradation and the dashed hope. The hideous comedy that had started everything… It was all a fantasy, of course, unless the police came knocking on his door in the next couple of days. After that, after the final killing, nothing he could say would save him. The loyalties of the gutter press would switch very bloody quickly, along with everybody else's, once the final victim had been discovered.

  Rapists were one thing, but this was, after all, very much another. Thorne was in the corner of the Major Incident Room, feeding coins into the coffee machine when Karim approached him.

  'Miss Bloom on line three, sir.'

  Momentarily confused, Thorne reached for his back pocket, understanding when he found it empty. His mobile was on his desk in the office. Eve would have tried that first and then, having got no reply, would have called the office number…

  Thorne crossed to a desk and picked up the phone. He held it to his chest until Karim had wandered far enough away.

  'It's me. What's up?'

  'Nothing serious. Keith's let me down, so I just need to change the time a bit on Saturday. I told him I was going out and he said that he'd lock up for me. Now he turns round and says that he needs to leave early as well, so I'm a bit stuffed…'

  'It doesn't matter. Get over when you can.'

  'I know, I just wanted to get to your place early, drop some stuff off before we go out to eat.'

  'Sounds interesting…'

  'It'll probably be nearer seven now, by the time I've sorted out the shop and put my face on.'

  'I can't see myself getting home a lot sooner than that anyway…'

  'Sorry to screw our arrangements around, but it's not my fault. Keith's usually pretty reliable. Tom…?'

  Eve's voice had faded away. Thorne was no longer listening. Our arrangements… Zoom in close and hold.

  The certainty of it came as swiftly, and snapped into place as tightly, as a ligature. Like the blue blur of the line as it whips past the face and down, only becoming clear when it begins to bite, Thorne knew in a second exactly what it was that he'd missed. What had lain shadowed and just out of reach. Now he saw it, brightly lit… Something he'd read and something he hadn't… They'd found all Jane Foley's letters to Remfry, the ones sent to him in prison and the couple that had been sent to his home address after his release. Nothing indicated that there were any letters missing, ad why would there be?

  Something had been missing though.

  Thorne had read those letters a dozen times, probably more, and nowhere had Jane Foley discussed the plans for her meeting with Douglas Remfry. The rendezvous itself was never talked about specifically. Not the time, or the date. Not even the name of the hotel…

  So how the hell had anything been arranged?

  Something Thorne could remember reading had been written by Dave Holland. His report on that first visit to collect Remfry's stuff, the day he went round there with Andy Stone and pulled those letters out from under Remfry's bed. Mary Remfry had been keen to stress her son's success with women. She'd made a point of mentioning the women that were sniffing around after Dougie had been released. The women that were calling up…

  Remfry, Welch and Southern had not just walked into those hotels thinking they were going to meet Jane Foley. They'd known they were going to meet her.

  They'd spoken to her.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  'Not just spoken on the phone either,' Holland said. 'I'm not sure about the others, but I think Southern might have met her.'

  They were gathered in Brigstocke's office, prior to a hastily arranged team briefing. Eighteen hectic hours since Thorne had put it together. Since he'd worked out that there was a her…

  'Go on, Dave,' Brigstocke said.

  'I interviewed Southern's ex-girlfriend…'

  Thorne remembered reading the statement. 'Right. They split up not long before he was killed, didn't they?'

  'That
's just it. She said that the main reason she dumped him was that she'd heard about some other woman, thought he'd been two timing her. Somebody told her that Southern had been bragging about it in the pub. Telling his mates he'd picked up this fantastic bit of stuff. Actually…'

  'What?' '

  'I need to look at the statement, but I think Southern supposedly told his mates that she had more or less picked him up.'

  Thorne looked past Holland, down to Brigstocke's desk, at the series of black and white photographs laid out in two lines across it.

  'Jane Foley,' he said.

  'Who is she; really?' Kitson said.

  Could be anybody,' Thorne said. 'We can't discount any possibility. A model he hired, or a hooker. The killer could have used her for the pictures, paid her to make the calls to Remfry and Welch. Bunged her a bit extra to pick up Howard Southern…'

  Brigstocke was gathering his notes together. He didn't believe what Thorne was suggesting any more than Thorne himself did. 'No, it's Sarah. The sister. Got to be…'

  'Using her mother's name,' Thorne said.

  'This is all about the mother,' Holland said. 'It's all about Jane.'

  Thorne moved towards the desk, correcting Holland as he passed him. 'It's all about a family…'

  'Which means nothing's straightforward,' Brigstocke said. 'Which means it's a damn sight more fucked up and impossible to fathom than we can even begin to imagine.'

  Thorne was thinking out loud as much as anything. 'I'm beginning to imagine it,' he said. 'Families can do damage.'

  'Are we about done?' Kitson asked, suddenly. She moved towards the door without waiting for an answer. 'I've got a couple of things to do before the briefing starts.'

  'I think so. Everybody clear?' Brigstocke looked at his watch and then at Thorne. The face of the watch was a whole lot easier to read.

  'Right, we'll start in five minutes then…'

  The 'missed-call' message had been scribbled on a memo sheet and left on Holland's desk. He screwed the paper up into his fist as he began to dial the number.

  'Mrs. Noble? This is Detective Constable Holland. Thanks very much for getting back to me.' He'd meant to chase her up at the end of the day yesterday, but after Thorne's moment of revelation, things had gone haywire…

  'I'm afraid I didn't get your message until quite late,' she said. 'And I didn't know whether or not to call you at home.'

  'It would have been fine,' Holland said. He probably wouldn't have heard the phone anyway over the sound of the argument he'd been having with Sophie.

  'I will get these photos back, won't I?'

  'Definitely. We'll take care of them, I promise.'

  'You'll need to give me a little bit of time to put my hands on them. They're in the cellar, I think. Actually, it might be the loft, but I'll find them…'

  Holland looked over his shoulder. The Incident Room was filling up. There were doubtless still a dozen or more smokers outside somewhere, getting their last lungful of nicotine for an hour or two, but most available seats and areas of bare desktop were already taken.

  'So what do you think? A day or two?'

  'Oh yes, I should think so. I've picked up such a lot of old rubbish over the years, mind you…'

  'Once you've got the photos, when can we come and pick them up?'

  'I beg your pardon?'

  Holland asked the question again, raising his voice above the growing level of hubbub around him.

  'Any time you like,' she answered. 'I'm not going anywhere.'

  Thorne was alone in Brigstocke's office. There were only five minutes until the briefing was due to begin. Brigstocke, who would kick things off, was already in the Incident Room. After he'd said his piece, it would be down to Thorne.

  He stood before the gallery of pictures on Brigstocke's desk. A series of images carefully designed to tempt and tease. To offer while at the same time giving absolutely nothing away… Thorne could not be sure if the woman in the photographs was Sarah Foley. It didn't really matter. She was there and yet she was absent. In most of the shots she was kneeling, her head bowed, or else artfully shadowed. Thorne picked each picture up in turn, studied it, waited in vain for it to tell him something that it had managed, thus far, to keep to itself.

  Aside from the powerful, disconcerting message the photos sent to his groin, Thorne saw nothing new.

  Even physically, though the promise of submission was constant, little was revealed. In some of the photos the woman looked to have dark hair, while in others it seemed more fair. In two of them the hair definitely looked blond, but it could easily have been a wig. The body itself appeared to change, depending on how it was posed and lit. It was alternately lissom and muscular, its position making it impossible to accurately judge the height, or even the build of the woman to whom it belonged.

  Sarah Foley, if it was her, had not been captured. Thorne looked at his watch. Another minute and he'd need to get out there. His job was to gee them up, to give the team enough to carry it into the home straight.

  The next few days they'd work their arses oft; and none more so than him. They'd be going back, as always, checking what they had in light of the new lead, but all the time there was forward momentum. He could already sense it, the hunger that increases when it smells the meal, a collective ticking in the blood. The investigation was picking up speed quickly, starting to race. From this point on, Thorne would make bloody sure nothing else got away from him. Still, barring an actual arrest, by the weekend he'd be ready for a break. Saturday night with Eve and Sunday with his old man. He allowed himself a smile. If everything went well on Saturday night, he'd probably be making something of a late start the following morning. Thorne was guessing that by knocking-off time on Saturday, he'd need something to divert him. There were other parts of him, better parts, that needed exercising, and he wasn't just talking about sex. It would be good to feel the fizz of it with Eve, the flush and the promise of it. The scary thrill and the wonderful release. He was also looking forward to spending a few hours with his father. He needed to feel that lurch, that welling up of whatever it was his old man could suck into Thorne's chest without trying…

  Karim appeared in the doorway, gave him a look.

  'On my way, Sam,' Thorne said.

  He would speak with real passion to the officers who were waiting for him. He wanted to catch this killer more than ever now, and he wanted to spread that desire around like a disease. He wanted to engineer that heady feeling of desperation and confidence that could sometimes make things happen all by itself.

  But he would take care to hold the other feeling inside, the one that had begun to come and go, and cause something to jump and scuttle behind his ribs…

  Yes, they were moving quickly. They were suddenly tearing along, they were up for it. But Thorne couldn't help but feel as if something was moving, equally as fast and with just as much determination, towards them. There was going to be a collision, but he didn't know when, or from which direction.

  He wouldn't see it coming.

  Thorne gathered up the photos from the desk, slipped them into a folder and walked towards the Incident Room.

  TWENTY-SIX

  They spoke to each other slowly, in whispers.

  'Did I wake you?'

  'What time is it?'

  'Late. Go back to sleep…'

  'It's OK…'

  'I'm sorry.'

  'Were you dreaming about it again?'

  'Every bloody night at the moment. Jesus… '

  'You never used to have dreams before, did you? I had them all the time, always did, but never you…'

  'Well I'm having them now. With a vengeance.'

  'That's an appropriate word.'

  'Will they stop, do you think? Afterwards?'

  'What?'

  'The dreams. Will they stop once it's all over?'

  'We'll know soon enough…'

  'I'm nervous about this one.'

  'No need to be.'

  'We're les
s in control of it than with the others. You know? With them we knew what to expect, we knew everything that might happen. That was the advantage of the hotels, they were predictable…'

  'It'll be fine…'

  'You're right, course it will, I know. I wake up like this and I'm still thinking about the stuff in the dream and my head's all fucked up.'

  'Is that the only reason you're nervous? Something going wrong?'

  'What else would it be?'

  'That's all right, then.'

  'You'd better be there on time, though…'

  'Don't be silly…'

  'You'd better fucking be there, all right? Think about the traffic.'

  'I never have any problems with the traffic, and I've always been there.'

  'I know you have. Sorry…'

  'What about Thorne?'

  'Thorne won't be a problem.'

  'Good '

  'I'm so tired. I have to try and get back to sleep now.'

  He reached for her, slid an arm across her belly.

  'Come here and I'll help you…'

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Not a very long time before, on a freezing night when weather and loneliness had seemed meant for each other, Thorne had dialed a number he had copied from a postcard in a newsagent's window. He'd driven round to a basement flat in 'Tufnell Park, handed over a few notes, and watched a fat, pink hand toss him off. He'd heard the woman's less-than-convincing groans and entreaties, the jangle of the charm bracelet that bounced on her wrist as she worked. He'd heard his own breath, and the low, desperate grunt as he finished. Then he'd driven home and gone to bed, where he'd done it again himself for twenty-five quid less…

  Now, Thorne moved around his office, willing away the last knockings of a muggy Saturday and remembering his hands-on adventure in vice with even less pleasure than he'd felt at the time. It was a measure of how low he had felt then. Of how much he was looking forward to his evening with Eve Bloom.

  He would leave Becke House feeling as positive as he had in a long time. Things had moved quickly. The few days since the woman – who might or might not be Sarah Foley – had elbowed her way to the right part of Thorne's brain and to the forefront of his investigation had yielded encouraging results.