Scaredy Cat (11 page)

'I hope my gril ing proved useful, Detective Inspector.' The way Bishop emphasised Thorne's rank, he might have been reading the cast list of an am-dram whodunnit. His evident glee at the situation told Thorne that he was more than wil ing to play his part but Anne was quick to discourage his interest in the case.

'Come on, Jeremy, I'm sure Tom doesn't want to talk about it. He probably can't, even if he wanted to.'

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This was fine with Thorne. He had no need to talk about the case. He wanted to let Bishop talk, and once the boundaries had been established he wasn't disappointed. Bishop was ful of stories. He seemed permanently amused, not only at his own patter but at the peculiarity of their cosy little threesome. Again, fine with Thorne. The anaesthetist dominated the conversation, occasional y

making an effort to engage the policeman in trite chitchat. 'Where do you live, then, Tom?' 'Kentish Town. Ryland Road.' 'Not my side of London. Nice?' Thorne nodded. No, not particularly.

Bishop was a witty and entertaining raconteur - probably. Thorne did his best to laugh in al the right places, although he felt clumsy and cack-handed as he watched his fel ow diners twirl spaghetti with professional deftness and delicacy.

'... and the two old dears were sat talking about the

beef crisis and how they were going to exercise their rights

as consumers and stick it to the French.'

'Politics in A and E?' Anne turned to Thorne. 'It's usual y non-stop babble about footbal or soap operas or "I know it's a nasty cut but he's never hit me before, honest."'

'But get ready for the kil er...' Bishop drained his wine

glass, letting them wait for the punchline. 'I heard them saying how they were going to boycott French fries!'

Thorne smiled. Bishop raised his eyebrows at Anne and

they both giggled before saying as one, 'NFN!'

Stifling her laugh, Anne leaned across to Thorne. 'Normal For Norfolk.'

Thome smiled. 'Right. Stupid or inbred.' Bishop nodded. Thorne shrugged. I'm just a copper. Thick as shit, me.

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Anne was stil giggling. They'd already polished off two bottles of wine and hadn't finished the pasta yet. 'Somewhere there's a doctor with too much time on his hands thinking up these jokes. There's loads of them, not very nice usual y.'

'Come on, Jimmy, they're just a bit of fun. I bet Tom's had to deal with a few JP FROGs in his time, haven't you, Tom?'

'Oh, almost certainly. That would be...?' Thorne raised his eyebrows.

'Just Plain Fucking Run Out of Gas,' Anne explained. 'When a patient is going to die. I hate that one...' She poured herself another glass of wine and leaned back in her chair, retiring momentarily as Bishop warmed to his theme.

'Jimmy gets a bit touchy and squeamish at some of the more ghoulish jokes that get us through the day. Seriously though, some of the shorthand is actual y a useful way to communicate quickly with a col eague.'

'And keep the patients in the dark at the same time?' Bishop pushed up his glasses with the knuckle of his index finger. Thorne noticed that his fingernails were beautiful y manicured.

'Absolutely right. Another of Jimmy's pet hates, but by far the best way if you ask me. What's the point of tel ing them things they aren't going to understand? If you do tel them and they do understand,

chances are it's only going to frighten the life out of them.' Anne began to clear away the plates.

'So better a patient who's in the dark than a JP FROG?' Bishop raised his glass to Thorne in mock salute. 'But that's not the best one. I get to deal with a lot of JP FROGs, but Jimmy, specialising as she does in lost causes, is very

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much the patron saint of IF BUNDYs.' He grinned, showing every one of his perfect teeth. 'Total y Fucked But Unfortunately Not Dead Yet.'

Thorne could hear Anne in the kitchen loading the dishwasher. He remembered the smug look on Bishop's face as he'd put the coffee cups in his dishwasher a few days before. He wore the same expression now. Thorne grinned back at him. 'So what about Alison Wil etts? Is she a IF BUNDY?'

Thorne saw at once that if he'd thought this would throw Bishop then he was seriously underestimating him. The doctor's reaction was clearly one of undisguised amusement. He raised his eyebrows and shouted through to the kitchen. 'Oh, Christ, Jimmy, I think I'm outnumbered.' He turned back to Thorne and suddenly there was a glimmer of steel behind the flippancy.

'Come on, Tom, is the moral indignation that was positively dripping from that last comment real y meant to suggest that you care about your.., victims, any more than we care about our patients? That we're just unfeeling monsters while the CID

is ful of sensitive souls like your good self?.' 'Christ, Tommy, what a smug bastard...' Susan, A4addy, Christine. And Helen...

'I'm not suggesting anything. It just seemed a bit harsh, that's al .'

'It's a job, Tom. Not a very nice one at times and, yes, it's quite wel paid after you've slogged your guts out training for seven years then spent a few more kissing enough arses to get to a decent level.' That certainly rang a bel . 'We're paid to treat, we're not paid to care. The simple truth is that the NHS can't afford to care, in any sense of the word.'

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Anne put an enormous plate of cheesecake in the centre of the table. 'M and S, I'm afraid. Great with pasta. Crap at puddings.' She went back through to the kitchen leaving Bishop to start divvying it up.

'I always tel students that they have a choice. They can think of the patients as John or Elsie or Bob or whatever and lose what little sleep they get...'

Thorne held out his plate for a slice of cheesecake. 'Or...?'

'Or they can be good doctors and treat bodies. Dead or alive, they're bodies.'

What had Thorne said earlier to Keable?

'Are you going to let him get away with this shit, Tommy?'

'I'm not sure what I'm going to do. Why don't you help me? Is it him? Is he the one?'

The one question they never answer.

Thorne started to eat. 'So, what do most of your students decide?'

Bishop shrugged and took a mouthful. He chuckled.

'There's another one.'

'What?'

'CID. Another acronym.'

Thorne smiled at Anne as she sat back down and helped herself to a slice. Bishop grunted, demanding the attention of the audience. He'd obviously come up with something wonderful.

Thorne turned to him and waited. Get ready for the kil er...

'Coppers In Disarray?'

Bishop was the first to leave. He'd shaken Thorne's hand and.., had he winked? Anne led him into the hal to get his jacket, leaving Thorne on the sofa with a glass of wine 104 MARK BILLINGHAM

listening to them saying their goodbyes. Their obvious intimacy disturbed him in every way he could think of. The next part of the evening, whatever that was, would have to be handled very careful y. Their voices were lowered, but there was no mistaking Bishop's low hum of contentment as he kissed Anne goodbye. Thorne wondered how witty and garrulous he'd be with a detective constable's fist halfway down his throat. He wondered how smug he'd be in an airless interview room. He wondered what he'd have to do to get him into one.

He heard the front door shut and took a deep breath. Now he wanted to be alone with Anne and not just because of what she could tel him about Bishop.

She came back into the living room to find Thorne staring into space with a huge smile on his face. 'What's so funny?' Thorne shrugged. He didn't want to get off on the wrong foot by tel ing her that he'd just come up with his own little acronym for Jeremy Bishop. A highly appropriate one as it happened. GAS.

Guilty As Sin.

'Where's Rachel this evening? Have you locked her in her room with a Spice Girls video?'

'She's out celebrating her GCSE results.'

'God, of course, it was today.' The papers had been ful of it. The increase in pass levels. The ever-widening gap between girls and boys. The Six-year-old with an A* in maths.

'Celebrating? She must have done wel ?'

Anne shrugged. 'Pretty wel , I suppose. She could maybe have tried harder in one or two subjects, but we were pretty pleased.'

Thorne nodded, smiling. P(/b? 'Hmm... pushy mother.' She laughed, flopping into the armchair opposite him

SLEEPYHEAD 105

and picking up her glass of wine. Thorne leaned forward to refil his own glass.

'Tel me about Jeremy's wife.'

She sighed heavily. 'Are you asking me as a policeman?' 'As a friend,' he lied.

It was a good few seconds before she answered. 'Sarah was a close friend. I'd known them both at medical school. I'm godmother to their kids, which is why I'm sure that your interest in him is a complete waste of time and I don't want to harp on about this, but it's starting to feel a bit... insulting actual y.'

Thorne did not want to lie to her, but he did anyway. 'It's just routine, Anne.'

She kicked off her shoes and pul ed her feet up underneath her. 'Sarah was kil ed ten years ago.., you must know al this.'

'I know the basic facts.'

'It was a horrible time. He's never real y got over it. I know he seems a bit.., assured, but they were very happy and he's never been interested in anyone else.'

'Not even you?'

She blushed. 'Wel , at least I know that this isn't an official question.'

'Completely unofficial and horribly nosy, I know, but I did wonder...'

'We were together once, a long time ago when we were both students.'

'And not since? Sorry...'

'My husband thought so, if that makes you feel a little less nosy. David always had a thing about Jeremy, but it was real y just professional rivalry, which he liked to tart up as something else.'

106 MARK BILLINGHAM

Like his hair, thought Thorne.

He'd tried to pace himself and Anne had drunk far more than he had, but he was definitely starting to feel a little lightheaded.

'What do his kids do?'

James, twenty-four, and Rebecca, twenty-six, another doctor. These facts and many others fil ing three pages of a notebook in his desk drawer.

'Rebecca's in orthopaedics. She works in Bristol.'

Thorne nodded, interested. Tel me something I don't know.

'James, wel , he's done al manner of things over the last

few years. He's been a bit unlucky, if I'm being kind.' 'And if you're being unkind?'

'Wel , he does sponge off his dad a little. Jeremy's a bit of a soft touch. They're very close. James was in the car when the-- they had the accident. He was a bit screwed up about it for a while.' She blew out a long, slow breath. 'I haven't talked about this for ages...'

Suddenly Thorne felt terrible. He wanted to hug her, but instead volunteered to make another cup of coffee.

They both stood up at the same time.

'Black or...?'

'Listen, Tom, I've got to say this.' Thorne thought she was starting to sound a bit pissed. 'I don't know what you think about Jeremy, I don't know why you had to go and question him... I dread to think, actual y, but whatever it is I wish you'd stop wasting your time. This is one of my oldest friends we're talking about, and I know he likes to play the hard-bitten, cynical doctor but it's just a party piece. I've heard it hundreds of times. He cares very much about his patients. He's very interested in Alison's progress...'

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Alison. The one person they were supposed to talk about and hadn't.

'I meant to have a word with you about that, actual y. You know we're trying to keep some things out of the papers?'

Her face darkened. 'Am I about to get told off?.' She wasn't remotely pissed.

'He seems to know a lot about the case and I just wondered if...'

She took a step towards him - not afraid of a fight. 'He knows a lot about the medical case, yes. We've spoken about Alison regularly and obviously he knows about the other attacks because that has a direct bearing on things.'

'Sorry, Anne, I didn't mean--'

'He's a col eague whose advice I value and whose discretion you can count on. I'd say take my word for it, but obviously there wouldn't be much point.'

She stared at him, his first reminder since that morning in the lecture theatre of just how scary she could look. Evidently he didn't have quite the same capacity to intimidate her.

Something in his face, he had no idea what, suddenly seemed to amuse her and her expression softened.

'Wel , what's it been? A few weeks? And we're already on to our second major row. It doesn't bode wel , does it?'

Thorne smiled. This was highly encouraging. 'Wel , I'd actual y categorise the first one as more of a bol ocking, if you want to be accurate.'

'Are you going to get that coffee or what?'

As he fil ed the mugs from the cafetire, she shouted through to him from the living room, 'I'l stick some music 108 MARK BILLINGHAM

on. Classical? No, let me try and guess what you're into...'

Thorne added the milk and thought, never in a mil ion years. He shouted back, 'Just put whatever you want on... I'm easy.' As he walked back in with the coffee, he almost laughed out loud as she turned round brandishing a wel worn and wonderful y vinyl copy of Electric Ladyland.

As the taxi - a black one, he wasn't going to make that mistake again - ferried him back towards Kentish Town, the evening's conversation rattled around in his head like coins in an envelope. He could remember every word of it. Bishop had been laughing at him.

The cab drove down the Archway Road towards Suicide Bridge and he looked away as they passed Queens Wood. He pictured the fox moving swiftly and silently through the trees towards its earth. A rabbit stil twitching in its jaws, trailing blood across leaves and fal en branches as the vixen carries its prey home. A litter of eager cubs tearing their supper to pieces - ripping away pale chunks of Helen Doyle's flesh while their mother stands frozen, watching for danger...