Lazy Bones (18 page)

Nine of them, gathered in a cold room plumbed for hoses, with easy-to-clean surfaces and drains in the floor. The smal est murmur or the crunching of peppermints magnified, bouncing off the cracked, cream tiles. A smal crowd, waiting for the body of Ian Welch to be uncovered and taken apart.

Thorne had attended hundreds of post-mortems, and though it was a process he had become resigned to, he had found that lately it was a difficult one to leave behind, to shed easily.

The visceral onslaught disturbed him now far less than the tiny details, the sensory minutiae which might stay with him for days after each session...

Blinking awake in the early hours, as a brain plops gently into a glass jar.

Dabbing at his freshly shaved face, the water spiral ing away, its momentary slurp like the sucking of the flesh at the finger that presses into it.

A smel at work, the odour of something very raw, lurking some, where deep within the medley of sweat and institutional food...

Nine of them gathered. Waiting like embarrassed guests at a bizarre party, strangers to each other. That dreadful hiatus between arriving, and anything actual y happening...

Final y, Hendricks drew back the white sheet and asked the equal y white PC to confirm it was the same body he'd seen earlier. The constable looked as though the only thing he could confirm was rising

rapidly up from his stomach. He swal owed hard. 'Yes,' he said, 'it is.' And they were away...

Hol and had moved across to the bar to get a round in and Thorne took his place next to Andy Stone. Karim leaned across, eager to involve Thorne in the game. Before he had a chance to speak, Thorne angled his body away, turned into the corner, towards Stone.

'Idiotic, bloody game,' Stone said. Thorne had only just got there,

145

but Stone sounded like he was three or four drinks ahead of him. 'If it's shag or die, you'd shag anybody, wouldn't you? So what's the point?'

Thorne swal owed a mouthful of lager and leaned a little closer to StOne. 'I need to have a quick word about what happened when we picked Gribbin up.'

If Stone had been on the way to being drunk, he sobered up very quickly. 'I was protecting the kid. I didn't know what he was going to do . . .'

'Which is exactly what the DCI is going to say. Stil , Fm here to tel you, off the record, that you overstepped the mark. That nobody wants to see it happen again, OK?' Stone stared forward, said nothing. 'Andy... ?' Thorne took another drink. Half the pint had gone already. 'Nobody's very fond of blokes like Gribbin, but you were over the top.'

'There's just so bloody many of them. I don't understand how there

can be so many of them walking about.'

'Listen...'

Stone turned. He spoke low and fast as if imparting dangerous information. Tve got a nate on the Child Protection Team over at Barnes. He told me about this tim4 they were after a child-kil er up in Scotland. This bloke had already kil ed three kids, they had a description, and some woman claimed she'd spotted him on a beach one bank holiday, right? So they appealed for people to come forward with their holiday snaps, see if anybody might have got a picture of this fucker accidental y...'

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

'So, they get hundreds of films handed in. They develop them al 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

146

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; Hol and argued with Sophie on the phone, pul ing faces for the lads, doing his best to laugh it off; nobody could choose between Vanessa Feltz and Esther Rantzen; Hol and spoke to Sophie again, then turned his phone off; Thorne bet Hendricks ten pounds that Spurs were going to finish above Arsenal the fol owing season; Hendricks had one Guinness too many and told Hol and that several of his gay friends fancied him...

Stone grabbed Thorne's arm as they were al stepping out into the clear, warm night. Saying their goodbyes.

'Something else my mate told me. They arrested this one bloke who had al 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 al these pictures, looking at them al , at their faces, hoping that one day he might find the pictures of himself...'

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

'That's rubbish, isn't it?' Stone said. 'That's bol ocks. That's an excuse, don't you think? That's not real y true, is it, sir...?'

Thorne stepped through the front door into the communal hal 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 bil s 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, smal hal way. The cat was rubbing itself againgt 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

147

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 stil 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 col ection for a day's worth of smack.

Thorne walked through to the kitchen, stared at the smal 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 smel 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 skil 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.

148

Al 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, col apsed 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 al eys and deserted bus stops. He knew that most rapists were known to their victims. Were trusted by them. Friends, col eagues, 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.

149

He pul ed 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.

150

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...'

'Wel , 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?'

'Wel , 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 stil carrying her bag across one shoulder. 'Have you not even been in

151

yet?' he asked. She shook her head, blowing out smoke from the side of her mouth. 'Bloody hel , 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'l 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, marvel ing 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 cal s somebody at Colindale . . .

Throw a few Chinese whispers into the mix and you had a cultural y diverse ensemble of runour, gossip and bul shit that outperformed any of the systems they actual y 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 Hol and.

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 Hol and 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...'

152

'Is that a smirk, Hol and?'

'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 recal 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?' Hol and 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, al right?'

'Whatever...'

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

'Fine...'

'I might ask Russel 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 fal out 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 Hol and had gone, Thorne stood, sipping his coffee and staring at the large, white write-on/wipe-off board that dominated one wal 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 al ocated by the office manager.

The names of those peripheral to the investigation. The names of those central to it: REMFRY, GRIBBIN, DODD...

153

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

And now a second name added beneath Dougie Remffy'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.