Lazybones (2 page)

He wanted to strip off the plastic suit, get in his car, and drive away.

Actually, if he were being
really
honest with himself, he would have had to admit that only
part
of him wanted that. The other part was buzzing. The part that knew the difference between some murder scenes and others; that was able to
measure
these things. Thorne had seen the victims of enraged spouses and jealous lovers. He had stared at the bodies of business rivals and gangland snitches. He knew when he was looking at something out of the ordinary.

This was a significant murder scene. This was the work of a killer driven by something special, something spectacular.

The room stank of hatred and of rage. It also stank of pride.

Hendricks, as if reading Thorne's mind, turned to him, half smiling. “Just another five minutes, okay? I'm not going to get anything else here…”

Thorne nodded. He looked at the dead man on the bed—the position of him, as if he were praying. Had it not been for the belt, for the livid red furrow that circled his neck, for the thin lines of blood that ran down the backs of his pale thighs, he might have been praying.

Thorne guessed that at the end, he probably had been.

The room was hot. Thorne raised an arm to rub a sore eye and felt the tickle as a drop of sweat slid down his ribs then took a sudden, sharp turn across his belly.

Down below, a frustrated driver leaned on his horn…

Thorne was not even aware that he'd closed his eyes, and when he heard a phone ring, he snapped them open, convinced for a few wonderful moments that he'd woken suddenly from a bad dream.

He turned, a little disoriented, and saw Holland standing next to the bedside table. The phone was an off-white seventies model, the dial cracked, the grimy handset visibly jumping in its cradle. Thorne was now fully alert but he was still somewhat confused. Was this a call for them? Was it police business? Or was it possible that whoever was down at what passed for a reception desk had not been told what was happening and had put a caller through from the outside? Having met one or two of the staff, Thorne could well believe that even knowing exactly what had happened, they might still be dim enough to put a call through to the occupant of Room 6. If that was the case, it would certainly be a stroke of luck…

Thorne moved toward the ringing phone. The rest of the team stood frozen, watching him.

The victim's clothes—it had to be presumed they
were
the victim's—lay strewn about the floor nearby. Trousers—minus their belt—and underpants were next to the chair. Shirt, crumpled into a ball. One shoe under the bed, up near the headboard. The brown corduroy jacket, slung across the back of a chair next to the bed, had contained no personal items. No wallet, no bus tickets, no crinkled photographs. Nothing that might help identify the dead man…

Thorne did not know if the phone had already been dusted for fingerprints, and he had no time to check. He reached out to grab a plastic evidence bag from the fat, babyish SOCO and wrapped it around his hand. He held the hand up, wanting silence. He didn't need to ask.

He took a breath and picked up the receiver. “Hello…?”

“Oh…hi.” A woman's voice.

Thorne locked eyes with Holland. “Who did you want to speak to?” He was holding the phone an inch or so away from his ear and didn't hear the answer properly. “Sorry, it's not a very good line, could you speak up?”

“Is that any good?”

“That's great.” Thorne tried to sound casual. “Who do you want to speak to?”

“Oh…I'm not really sure, actually…”

Thorne looked at Holland again and shook his head.
Fuck.
It wasn't going to be that easy. “Who am I talking to?”

“Sorry?”

“Who are you?”

There was a short pause before she spoke. The voice was suddenly a little tighter. Confident, though, and refined. “Listen, I don't want to sound rude, but it was somebody there who called
me.
I don't particularly want to give out—”

“This is Detective Inspector Thorne from the Serious Crime Group…”

A pause. Then: “I thought I was calling a hotel…”

“You
have
called a hotel. Could you please give me your name?” He looked across at Holland, puffed out his cheeks. Holland was poised, notebook in hand, looking utterly confused.

“You could be anybody,” the woman said.

“Listen, if it makes you happier, I can call you back. Better still, let me give you a number to call so you can check. Ask for DCI Russell Brigstocke. And I'll give you my mobile number…”

“Why do I need your mobile number if you're calling me back?”

The conversation was starting to get faintly ridiculous.
Thorne thought he could detect a note of amusement, perhaps even flirtation, creeping into this woman's voice. Pleasing as this was on an otherwise grim morning, he wasn't really in the mood.

“Madam, the phone I'm speaking on, the phone you've called, is located at a crime scene and I need to know why you're calling.”

He got the message across. The woman, though suddenly sounding a little panicky, did as she was asked.

“It was on my answering machine. I got here, I got into work this morning, and checked my messages. This one was the first. The man who called left the name of the hotel and the room number for delivery…”

The man who called.
Was that the man on the bed or…?

“What was the message?”

“He was placing an order. Bloody funny time to be doing it, though. That was why I was a bit…cautious about calling. I thought it might be a joke, you know, kids messing about, but kids wouldn't give you the right address, would they?”

“Did he leave a name?”

“No, which is one of the reasons I'm calling. And to get a credit card number. I don't do cash on delivery…”

“What do you mean, ‘bloody funny time'?”

“The message was left at ten past three this morning. I bought one of those flashy machines that tells you the time, you know?”

Thorne pressed the mouthpiece to his chest, looked across at Hendricks. “I know the time of death. A tenner says you don't get within half an hour either side…”

“Hello?”

Thorne put the phone back to his ear. “Sorry, I was conferring with a colleague. Can I ask you to keep the tape from the machine, Miss…?”

“Eve Bloom.”

“You said something about placing an order?”

“Oh sorry, didn't I say? I'm a florist. He was ordering some flowers. That's why I was slightly freaked out, I suppose…”

“I don't understand. Freaked…?”

“Well, to be ordering what he was ordering in the middle of the night…”

“What exactly did the message say?”

“Hang on a minute…”

“No, just…”

She'd already gone. After a few seconds, Thorne heard the click of the button being hit and the noise of the tape rewinding. There was a pause and then a bang as she put the receiver down next to the machine.

“It's coming up,” she shouted.

Then a hiss as the tape began to play.

There was no discernible accent, no real emotion of any sort, in the voice. To Thorne, it sounded as if someone was trying hard to
sound
characterless, but there was a hint of something like amusement in the voice somewhere. In the voice of the man Thorne had to assume was responsible for the bound and bloodied corpse not three feet away from him.

The message began simply enough.

“I'd like to order a wreath…”

December 3, 1975

Thorne lost his bet with Phil Hendricks.

He answered the phone barely four hours after they'd found the body and within a few seconds he was lobbing his half-eaten sandwich across the office, missing the bin by several feet. He chewed what was left in his mouth quickly, knowing that his appetite was about to disappear.

Hendricks was calling from Westminster Mortuary. “Pretty quick,” he said. He sounded extremely chipper. “You've got to bloody admit—”

“Why do you always manage to do this when I'm eating lunch? Couldn't you have left it another hour?”

“Sod that, mate, there's money at stake. Right, you ready? I'm going for time of death at somewhere around quarter to three in the morning.”

“Shit.” Thorne stared out of the window at a row of low gray buildings on the other side of the M1. He didn't know if the window was dirty or if that was just Hendon. “This had better be worth a tenner. Go on…”

“Right, how d'you want it? Medical jargon, layman's terms, or pathology-made-easy for thick-as-shit coppers?”

“That's cost you half the tenner. Get on with it…”

Hendricks spoke about death and its intimacies with considerably less passion than he demonstrated for Arsenal Football Club. Being from Manchester and not supporting the dreaded Manchester United was far from being the only finger he stuck up at convention. There
were the clothes in varying shades of black, the shaved head, the ludicrous number of earrings. There were the mysterious piercings, one for each new boyfriend….

He might have
spoken
dispassionately, almost matter-of-factly, but Thorne knew how much Phil Hendricks cared about the dead. How hard he listened to their bodies when they spoke to him. When they gave up their secrets.

“Asphyxia due to ligature strangulation,” Hendricks said. “Plus, I think it happened on the floor. He had carpet burns on both knees. I think the killer put the body on the bed afterward. Posed it.”

“Right…”

“Unfortunately, I still can't tell for sure whether or not he was strangled before, after, or during the sodomy.”

“So, you're not perfect, then?”

“I know one thing. Whoever did it has a big future in gay porn. Our killer's hung like a donkey. He did quite a bit of damage up there….”

Thorne knew he'd been right to get rid of the sandwich. He'd lost count of the conversations like this he'd had with Hendricks over the years. His head was used to them, but his stomach still found them tricky.

Thorne called it the H-plan diet…

“What about secretions?”

“Sorry, mate, bugger all. Only thing up there that shouldn't have been was a trace of spermicidal lubricant from the condom he was wearing. He was careful, in every sense…”

Thorne sighed. “Where's Holland? He still with you?”

“No chance, mate. He shot away first chance he had. Why did you send him down anyway? Actually, I'm hurt you didn't want to watch me work…”

These conversations, the ones that followed bodies, always ended on something lighthearted. Football, TV, anything…

“DC Holland hasn't seen you work nearly
enough,
though, Phil,” Thorne said. “It still gives him the heebies. I'm doing him a favor, toughening him up…”

Hendricks laughed. “Right…”

Right,
Thorne thought. He knew very well that when it came to slabs and scalpels you never toughened up. You just pretended you had…

 

Standing in the Incident Room, preparing to brief the team, Thorne felt, as he often did on these occasions, like a teacher who was feared but not particularly liked. The slightly psychotic PE teacher. These thirty or so people in front of him—detectives, uniformed officers, civilian and auxiliary staff—might just as well have been children. There were as many different types as could be found sitting in any drafty school hall in London, even as Thorne was speaking.

There were those who appeared to be listening intently but would have to check with colleagues later to find out exactly what they were supposed to be doing. Some, on the other hand, would be overkeen, asking questions and nodding eagerly, with every intention of doing as little as possible when the time came. There were the bullies and the picked upon. The geeks and the morons.

The Metropolitan Police Service.
Service,
note, with the emphasis on caring and efficiency. Thorne knew very well that most of the people in the room, himself on some occasions included, were happier back when they were a
force
.

One to be reckoned with.

It was four days since that first postmortem conversation with Hendricks, and if the pathologist had been quick, the team at Forensic Science Services had outdone him. Seventy-two hours for DNA results was really going some, especially when the crime scene was as much
of a DNA nightmare as that hotel room had been. One notch up from a homeless shelter, it had yielded hair and skin samples from upward of a dozen individuals, male and female. Then there were the cats and dogs and at least two other animal species as yet unidentified.

And yet, incredibly, they'd found a match.

They were no nearer finding the killer, of course, but now they were at least certain who his victim had been. The dead man's DNA had been on file, for a very good reason.

Thorne cleared his throat, got a bit of hush. “Douglas Andrew Remfry, thirty-six years of age, was released from Derby Prison ten days ago, having served seven years of a twelve-year sentence for the rapes of three young women. We're putting together an accurate picture of his movements since then, but so far it looks like a pretty consistent shuttle between pub, betting shop, and the house in New Cross where he was living with his mother and her…?” Thorne looked across at Russell Brigstocke, who held up three fingers. He turned back to the room. “Her
third
husband. We'll hopefully have a lot more in terms of Remfry's movements and so on later today. DCs Holland and Stone are there at the moment with a search warrant. Mrs. Remfry was somewhat less than cooperative….”

An acnefied trainee detective near the front shook his head, his face screwed up in distaste for this woman he'd never met. Thorne gave him a good, hard stare. “She's just lost a son,” he said. Thorne let his words hang there for a few seconds before continuing. “If the landlady is to be believed, Remfry, unless his killer happens also to be his double, booked the room himself. He didn't feel the need to give a name, but he was happy enough to hand over the cash. We need to find out why. Why was he so keen to go to that hotel? Who was he meeting…?”

Thorne, in spite of himself, was smiling slightly as he recalled the interview with the hotel's formidable owner—a bottle blonde with a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp and a sixty-fags-a-day rasp.

“And who pays for the replacement of those sheets?” she'd asked. “All them pillows and blankets that this nutter nicked? They were one hundred percent cotton, none of 'em was cheap…” Thorne had nodded, pretended to write something down, wondering if her memory was as good as her capacity to talk utter shite with a straight face. “And the stains on the mattress. Where do I get the money to get that lot cleaned?”

“I'll see if I can find you a form to fill in,” Thorne said, thinking,
Will I fuck, you hatchet-faced old mare
…

In the Incident Room, the trainee detective Thorne had stared at before poked a single finger up. Thorne nodded.

“Are we looking at the prison angle, sir? Someone Remfry was in Derby with, maybe. Someone he got on the wrong side of…”

“Someone he got up the
back
side of!” The comment came from a mustached DC sitting off to Thorne's left toward the back of the room. Thorne did not know the man. He'd been brought in, like many in the room, from different squads to make up the numbers. His “backside” comment got a big laugh. Thorne manufactured a chuckle.

“We're looking at that. Remfry's sexual preference was certainly for women before he got put away…”

“Some of them develop a taste for it inside, though, don't they?” This time the laugh from his mates felt forced. Thorne allowed it to die away, let his voice drop a little to regain attention and control.

“Most of you lot are going to be tracing the most likely group of suspects we've got at the moment…”

The trainee nodded knowingly. One of the clever ones.
He thought this was some kind of conversation. “The male relatives of Remfry's rape victims.”

“Right,” Thorne said. “Husbands, boyfriends, brothers. Sod it, fathers at a push. I want them all found, interviewed, and eliminated. With a bit of luck we might eliminate all of them except one. DI Kitson has drawn up a list and will be doing the allocations.” Thorne dropped his notes onto a chair, pulled his jacket from the back of it, almost done. “Right, that's it. Remfry's were particularly nasty offenses. Maybe someone wasn't convinced he'd paid for them…”

The DC with the porno mustache smirked and muttered something to the uniform in front of him. Thorne pulled on his jacket and narrowed his eyes.

“What?”

Suddenly he might just as well have been that teacher, holding out a hand, demanding to see whatever was being chewed.

The DC spat it out. “Seems to me that whoever killed Remfry did everyone a favor. Fucker asked for everything he got.”

It was far from being the first such comment Thorne had heard since the DNA match had come back. He looked across at the DC. He knew that he should slap the cocky sod down. He knew that he should make a speech about their jobs as police officers, their need to be dispassionate, whatever the case, whoever the victim. He should talk about debts having been paid and maybe even drag out stuff about one man's life being worth no more and no less than any other.

He couldn't be bothered.

 

Dave Holland was always happiest deferring to rank or, if he got the chance, pulling it. When it was just himself and another DC, things were never clear-cut and it made him uncomfortable.

It was simple. As a DC, he deferred to a DS and above, while
he
was able to play the big man with trainee detectives and uniformed officers. Out and about with a fellow DC, and things
should
just settle into a natural pattern. It was down to personality, to clout.

With Andy Stone, Holland felt outranked. He didn't know why and it peeved him.

They'd got on well enough so far, but Stone could be a bit “up himself.” He had a coolness, a
flashiness,
Holland reckoned, that he turned on around women and superior officers. Stone was clearly fit and good-looking. He had very short dark hair and blue eyes, and though Holland wasn't certain, when Stone walked around, it looked as though he knew the effect he was having. What Holland
was
sure of was that Stone's suits were cut that bit better, and that around him he felt like a ruddy-cheeked boy scout. Holland would probably still get the vote as housewives' choice, but they all wanted to mother him. He doubted they wanted to mother Andy Stone.

Stone could also be overcocky when it came to bad-mouthing their superiors, and though Holland wasn't averse to the game himself, it got a bit tricky when it came to Tom Thorne. Holland knew the DI's faults well enough. He'd been on the receiving end of his temper, had been dragged down with him on more than one occasion…

Yet, for all that, having Thorne think well of him, consider that something
he'd
done was worthwhile, was, for Holland, pretty much as good as it could get.

He'd been on the team a lot longer than Andy Stone, and Holland thought that should have counted for something. It didn't appear to. It had been Stone who'd done most of the talking when they'd shown up bright and early on Mary Remfry's doorstep with a search warrant.

“Good morning, Mrs. Remfry.” Stone's voice was
surprisingly light for such a tall man. “We have a warrant to enter and…”

She'd turned away then and, leaving the door open, had trudged away down the thickly carpeted hallway without a word. Somewhere inside a dog was barking.

Stone and Holland had entered and stood at the bottom of the stairs deciding who should start where. Stone made for the living room, where, through the partially opened door, they could see a silver-haired man slumped in an armchair, lost in morning TV trivia. As Stone leaned on the door he hissed to Holland, nodding toward the kitchen, where Mrs. Remfry had seemed to be heading.

“Cup of tea likely, you reckon?”

It wasn't.

It seemed odd to Holland, needing a warrant to search a victim's house. Still, like Stone had said, Remfry
was
a convicted rapist and the mother's attitude hadn't really given them a lot of choice. It wasn't just the grief at her son's death turning to anger. It was a genuine fury at what she saw as the implication in one particular line of questioning. Considering the manner and circumstances of her son's death, it was a necessary line to pursue, but she was having no truck with it at all.

“Dougie was a ladies' man, always. A proper ladies' man.”

She was saying it again, now, having suddenly appeared in the doorway of her son's bedroom, where Holland was methodically going through drawers and cupboards. Mary Remfry, midfifties, tugging a cardigan tightly over her nightdress, watched, but did not really take in what Holland was doing. Her mind was concentrated on talking at him.

“Dougie loved women and women loved him right back. That's gospel, that is.”

Holland was considerate going through the room. He
would have been whether Mrs. Remfry had been watching or not, but he made the extra effort to be respectful as he sorted through drawers full of vests and pants and thrust a gloved hand into pillowcases and duvet covers. In the short time since his release, Remfry had obviously not acquired much in the way of new clothing or possessions, but there seemed to be a good deal still here from the time before he went to prison. There was plenty from before he ever left school…