Lazy Bones (11 page)

The girl lobbed her empty can into the road and shouted back at

Thorne. . 'Poofs! Fucking queers...' "

Thorne lurched forward to chase after them but Hendricks's hand,

which had never left his shoulder, squeezed and held on. 'Just leave it.' 'No.'

'Forget it, calm down...'

He yanked his shoulder free. 'Little fuckers...'

Hendricks stepped in front of Thorne, picked up the bag and held it out to him.

'What are you more pissed off about, Tom? The fact that I was cal ed a queer? Or that you were?'

Unable to answer the question, Thorne took the bag and they carried on walking. They veered almost immediately right on to Angler's Lane, a one-way street that would bring them out close to Whorne's flat This narrow cut-through to Prince of Wales Road had once been a smal tributary off the River Fleet, now one of London's 'lost'

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underground rivers. Here, when Victoria took the throne, local boys would fish for carp and trout, before the water became so stinking and pol uted that no fish could survive, and it had to be diverted beneath the earth, confined and hidden away in a thick iron pipe.

Now, as Thorne walked home along the course of the lost river, it seemed to him that nearly two centuries later the stench was just as bad.

By a little after ten, Hendricks was fast asleep on the sofa, and likely to remain so wel into Sunday morning. Thorne tidied up around him, switched off the TV and went into the bedroom.

He got no reply from the flat. She answered her mobile almost immediately.

'It's Thorne. I hope it's not too late. I remembered from the sign on the door of the shop that you weren't open on Sundays, so I thought you might...'

'It's fine. No problem...'

Thorne lay back on the'bed. He thought that she sounded pretty pleased to hear from him.

'I wanted to say thanks,' he said. 'I enjoyed today.'

'Good..Me too. Want to do it again?'

During the short pause that fol owed, Thorne looked up at the cheap, crappy lampshade, listened to her laughing quietly. There was a noise he couldn't place in the background. 'Bloody hel ,' he said. 'You don't waste a lot of time...'

'What's the point? We only saw each other a few hours ago and

you're ringing up, so you're obviously pretty keen.'

'Obviously...'

'Right, wel , tomorrow's for sleeping and I'm busy in the evening. So, how keen would you say you are, real y? On a scale of one to ten...'

'Er... how does seven sound?'

'Seven's good. Any less and I'd've been insulted and more would

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have been borderline stalker. Right then, what about breakfast on

Monday? I know a great caff...'

'Breakfast?'

'Why not? I'l meet you before work.'

'OK, I'l probably have to be at work about nine-ish, so...'

Eve laughed. 'I thought you were keen, Thorne! We're talking about when I start work. Half past five, New Covent Garden flower market...'

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17 JULY, 1976

It was more than half an hour since he'd heard the noises. The grunting and the shouting and the sounds of glass shattering. He heard her footsteps as she moved around, from her bedroom across that creaky floorboard that he'd never got around to fixing, into the bathroom and back again.

He spent that half-hour wil ing himself to get up off the settee and see what had happened. Not moving. Needing to build up some strength, some control before he could venture upstairs...

Sitting in front of the television, wondering how much longer this was going to go on. The doctor had said that if she kept taking the tran quil isers, then things would settle down, but there was no sign of that happening. In the meantime, he was having to do al the stuff that needed doing. Everything. She was in no state to go to the shops or to the school. Christ, it had been 'over a week since she'd last come downstairs.

Walking across to the foot of the stairs, stiff and slow as a Golem . . . Listening to it, watching it, feeling it al come apart. They'd given him the time off work, but the sick pay wasn't going to last for ever and she was contributing nothing and now the debts were growing as thick and fast as the suspicion. Mushrooming, like the doubts that sprouted in every damp, dark corner of their lives; had been, ever since that moment when the foreman of the jury had stood and cleared his throat.

He walked into the bedroom, feeling the carpet crunch beneath his feet. He glanced down at a dozen, distorted reflections of himself in the shards of broken mirror, then across to where she lay, no more than a lump beneath the blankets. He turned and walked back the way he'd come. Back across the creaky floorboard.

In the bathroom, he skidded in the puddles of ivory face-cream. He

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stepped across the piss-coloured slicks of perfume. He kicked away the broken bottles into every corner.

So much that was designed to smel al uring, desirable, mingled unnat ztral y on floor and wal s, making him heave...

He moved across to the sink, afraid he would retch. He found it fil ed with the contents of the cabinet that stood empty above it.

Blusher and lipstick and eye-shadow ground into the porcelain. Moisturiser clogging the plughole like poisonous waste.

Powder and shampoo and bath oil, thrown and poured and sprinkled. The edges of her fancy soaps blunted against the wal s. Dents in the plasterboard, pink as babies, blue as bruises.

The mirror cracked, and spattered with nail varnish, red as arterial spray...

He ran a tap into the perfumed swamp, splashed water on to his face. He looked around at her handprints in talcum, the fingertrails dragged through brightly coloured body lotion. Hints of herself left behind in everything she was trying to discard.

She'd been fine until they'd found her out, hadn't she? Fine with he knowledge of what she'd done as long as it stayed just between her and Franklin. Now the guilt was eating at her, wasn't it? Sending her fucking

mental or making her pretend that she was, it didn't real y matter which.

Half a minute later he was walking back down the stairs, thinking, She

lied, she lied, she lied, she lied...

She. Lied.

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SEVEN

Thorne might wel have gone right off Eve Bloom had she been a morning person - one of those deeply annoying types who is always bright-eyed and bushy-tailed whatever the ungodly hour. As it was, he was relieved to find her wedged into a quiet corner, clutching a poly srene cup fil ed with seriously strong tea, and grimacing at nothing in particular. She clearly felt as much like a warmed-up bag of shit as he did...

Thorne cranked his face into action and forced a smile. 'And there I was, thinking that you'd be ful of the joys of it.' She stared at him, said nothing. 'Fired up by the noise and the colour, intoxicated by the

sweet smel of a mil ion flowers...'

She scowled. 'Bol ocks.'

Thorne shivered slightly and rubbed his arms through the sleeves of his leather jacket. It might have been the hottest summer for a good few years, but at this time in the morning it was stil distinctly bloody nippy. 'Like that then?' he said. 'Floristry losing its appeal, is it?'

She took a noisy slurp of tea. 'Some aspects get ever so slightly on my tits, yes . . .'

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They stepped back as a trol ey piled high with long, multicoloured boxes came past. The porter behind it winked at Eve, laughed when she gave him the finger.

'You know you want me, Evie,' he shouted, wheeling the trol ey away.

She turned back to Thorne. 'So, you love everything about your job, do you?'

'No, not everything. I'm not big on post-mortems or armed sieges.

Or team-building seminars...'

'There you go, then...'

'Most of the time though, I think I love it...'

There was the first hint of a smile. She was starting to enjoy their double act. 'Sounds to me like maybe you love it, but you're not in love with it...'

'Right.' Thorne nodded. 'Problems with commitment.'

She blew on to the tea, her pale face deadpan. 'Typical bloke,' she said. Then she laughed and Thorne got his first glimpse that day of Cthe gap in her teeth that he liked so much...

They moved methodical y through the vast, indoor market. Up and down the wide concrete aisles. He fol owed a few steps behind her, cradling his own cup of rust-coloured tea and feeling himself coming slowly to life, the creases cracking open. Taking it al in...

The shouts and whistles of traders and customers alike echoing through the gigantic warehouse. Twenty- and fifty-pound notes counted out and slapped into palms. Porters humping boxes or steering noisy forklifts in their green, fluorescent jackets. Al the colours - the stock, the signs, the punters' fleecy tops and puffa jackets - al standing out against the dazzling white buzz of a thousand striplights, dangling from the girders forty feet above.

Eve Bloom clearly knew every inch of this space the size of two footbal pitches; where to find every wholesaler and specialisti where to get the pots, the bulbs, the sundries; the location of any plant, flower or tree among tens of thousands of others. Whorne watched as she

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ordered, as she haggled and as she connected with stal holders and

market staff.

'Al right, Evie darlin'...'

'How are you, sweetheart...?'

'Here she is! Where you been hiding yourself, love...?'

Despite her earlier stab at grumpiness, Thorne could see that she

real y enjoyed this part of the job. The smile was instant, the banter good natured and flirtatious. If her customers liked her half as much as those she was buying from, her shop was probably doing pretty wel . For al this, it was clear that she drove a hard bargain and would take nothing unless the price was right. The wholesalers shook their heads as they tapped at their computer keyboards or scribbled in their pink order books. 'I'm cutting my throat sel ing at this price...' Within half an hour she was done and there was no shortage of porters volunteering to load up her boxes and take them out to where her smal white van was parked.

Once business was out of the way, she took Thorne on one last circuit of the market. She sho@ed him a bewildering selection of different flowers - the ones she liked or hat&d, the sweetest smel ing and the oddest looking. She pointed out the red and yel ow gerberas, lined up neatly in rows and stacked in smal square boxes like fruit. The pink peonies, the orange protea like pin cushions, and the phal ic anthuriums, their heads like something Dennis Bethel might photograph. Thorne saw enough Jersey carnations to fil every buttonhole at a century's worth of society weddings and enough lilies for a thousand good funerals. He looked at daisies and delphiniums, the stuff of cheap and cheerful bouquets for desperate men to buy from petrol station forecourts in the early hours. Then there were gangling, blue and orange birds of paradise at five pounds a stem and fruiting lemon trees in vast pots, both surely destined for the dining tables and bespoke conservatories of Hampstead and Highgate.

Thorne nodded, asked the occasional question, looked keen. When

she asked, he told her he was enjoying himself. In truth, though he was

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impressed by her knowledge and touched to a degree by her enthusiasm, he was dreaming of bacon sandwiches...

Half an hour later, and Thorne's fantasy had become greasy reality. Eve had kept him company, working her way through sausage, egg and chips like a long-distance lorry driver. It may or may not have been her breakfast of choice, but the card was not the sort of place that offered much in the way of a healthy alternative.

'How often do you do this?' Thorne asked. 'Harden my arteries or get up horribly early?' 'The market...'

'Just one day a week, thank God. Some people do it two or three times a week, but I'm much too fond of my bed.'

Thorne swal owed another mouthful of tea. In the two and something hours he'd been up, he'd already drunk more tea than he'd normal y consume in a week. He could feel it, sloshing about in his bel y like dirty water at the bottom of a tank.

'So what you bought this morning's going to last you the week, then? ....

'Wel , if it does, the business is in big trouble. The rest of the stock I need comes over from Hol and. This mad Dutchman drives a big van over on a Friday, goes round every smal florist in East London. It's more expensive than coming down here but I get a lie-in, so sod it...'

She reached into a smal leather rucksack, pul ed out a packet of Silk Cut. She offered it to Thorne. 'Want one?'

'No, I don't, thanks.' This wasn't strictly true. Fifteen and more years he'd been off the fags, and he stil wanted one...

She lit up, took a long drag. Drew the smoke down deep and let it out slowly with a low hum of contentment. 'It's your birthday a week today, isn'tit?' 'You've got a good memory,' he said.

He puffed out his cheeks. 'Mine's getting worse the older I get.' He pul ed a mock-sulky face. 'Thanks for reminding me about that, by the way...'

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A spark flared briefly inside his head then fizzled and died. There was something he was trying to remember, something he knew was important to the case. It was smething he'd read.

Or maybe something he hadn't read...

He brought his eyes back to Eve and saw that she was speaking. Saying something he couldn't hear. 'Sorry, what...?'

She leaned across the table. 'Be a nice birthday present to yourself if you solved your case, wouldn't it?'

Thorne nodded slowly, smiled. 'Wel , I had promised myself some

She flicked ash from her cigarette, rubbed the tip around the edge of the ashtray. 'You don't like talking about your job, do you?'

He looked at her for a few seconds before answering. 'There's things I can't talk about, especial y with you being involved. The stuff I can talk about just isn't very exciting...'

'And you think I'd be as bored as you were when I showed you

round the market...?'

'I wasn't bored.'

'Do the criminals you interview lie as badly as you do?'