Scaredy Cat (34 page)

It's just unJbrtunate that it happens to be the bit that controls things. Al the communications pass through it. If your brain's Paddington station, this bit's the signal box. Basical y, the signals stil get waved or switched on or whatever. When I want to wiggle a toe or sniff or speak, the instruction stil goes out. This thing cal ed a relay cel is supposed to make it happen: it fires the signal down the line to the next cel and then the next one. It's like a microscopic version of 'pass it on'al the way to my toe or my nose or wherever. Unfortunately, somewhere in the middle, some of the cel s aren't playing the game properly and that's the end of that. In layman's terms, this is me.

Bizarrely, though, as one part of my brain is fucked, it feels like other parts are compensating and changing. The bit that deals with sound. It feels like that bit's been upgraded. I can distinguish between sounds that are very similar. I can place a nurse by the squeak of her shoe and tel how far away things are. The sounds give me a picture in my head, like I'm turning into a bat.

And it's helping me to remember.

Those underwater sounds are getting clearer every day. Words are sharpening up. I can make out a lot of what we said to each other now, me and the man who put me in hospital.

Fragments of a soundtrack.

328 MARK BILLINGHAM

A lot of it's me, of course, no real surprise there, waffling on about the party and the wedding and stuff. Christ, I sound very pissed. I can hear the champagne going down my throat and I can hear him laughing at my dismal, drunken jokes.

I hear myself playing with the front-door keys. Inviting him inside to finish the drink. Slurred and stupid words. Words that are hardly worth remembering. The last words ever to come out of my mouth.

I'm stil groping for the words that came out of his.

TWENTY

As Thorne drove towards the Edgware Road, he found himself fighting to stay awake. The noise of six empty beer cans, ratting around in the footwel , was helping, but it was stil a struggle. It had been a long night, and a bleak one. Not even the spectacle of Hol and on the phone that morning, squirming and looking pained as he tried sheepishly to explain to Sophie where he'd spent the night, had raised the spirits.

They'd talked long into the night. Hol and told Thorne what had happened to Michael and Eileen Doyle. They'd done it with tablets. The police had been cal ed to the house on Windsor Road by a neighbour. She'd presumed they'd gone away to stay with relatives after what had happened to Helen.

A PC found them in an upstairs bedroom. They were holding hands.

In spite of what Hol and had already had to drink, Thorne dug out a few cans and they'd sat up talking about everything and nothing. Parents, partners, the job. As the drink met the tiredness head on, Hol and had started to drift off, and Thorne began to ramble vaguely about the girls. About Christine and Susan and Madeleine. And Helen. He didn't say anything about their voices He didn't

330 MARK BILLINGHAM

mention how strange he found it that he never heard the voice of Maggie Byrne.

Thorne wondered if Hol and heard it. He never asked him.

The note lay beside him on the passenger seat, safely Wrapped up. He saw himself handing it over in exchange for a warrant. He heard himself reading Jeremy Bishop his rights. He pictured himself leading the good doctor away, down the front path, past his terracotta pots ful of dead and dying flowers.

Then he arrived at work and it al fel apart.

'They couldn't get a thing. Sorry, Tom.'

Keable did look sorry. But not as sorry as Thorne. They'd been waiting for him, Keable and Tughan, to fuck him up the second he stepped out of the lift.

'A ring's a difficult enough thing to print anyway by al accounts. A smal surface area. This one was just a mess Dozens of partials but nothing worth writing up. We even sent it over to the Yard. SO3 have got better equipment, but --'

'What about dead skin on the inside? Hairs from a finger?' Thorne was trying to sound reasonable.

Tughan shook his head. 'The bloke I spoke to said it was a forensic nightmare. It's been up and down the country, for Christ's sake, handled by God knows how many people.'

Thorne slumped back against the lift doors and felt fury fighting a battle with tiredness for control of him. 'Did you at least check the hal mark? Check it and you'l find out that ring was made the same year Bishop got married.'

SLEEPYHEAD 331

Keable nodded but Tughan was in no mood to humour Thorne. 'Listen, even if we do get something, the chain of evidence is nonexistent.'

The fury won the battle. 'And whose fault is that? This has been one huge fuck-up from start to finish. I should have had a warrant by now. I should be tearing that bastard's house apart.

This case should be over by now over.' Tughan moved back towards his desk. 'It was only ever a slim possibility, Tom. We knew that even if you didn't. What were you planning to do anyway? Slip it on to Bishop's finger like a fucking glass slipper?'

Thorne waited until Tughan's self-indulgent chuckle had finished. 'How are you planning to spend the money the newspaper paid you, Nick?'

The eolour rose immediately to Tughan's hol ow cheeks. Keable stared hard at him, then back to Thorne, deciding final y that accusations would be best left until another day. 'Listen, Tom,' Keable said, 'Nobody's more upset about this than me and I'm going to crack some heads, trust me.'

And now Thome felt the tiredness come rushing at him. He could barely keep his head erect. He closed his eyes. He had no idea how long they'd been closed when Keable next spoke.

'We've got this latest note. It's a significant development.'

'Another press conference?'

'I think it would be a good idea, yes.'

Thorne cal ed the lift back up. Raising his arm and bringing his finger to the button was a struggle. He had an idea now of the effort it took for Alison to blink. He wanted to go home. He had no intention of hanging around and

332 MARK BILLINGHAM

answering phones. He needed to lie down and switch himself off.

One final question: 'Is Jeremy Bishop this investigation's prime suspect?'

Keable hesitated a fraction too long before replying, but Thorne didn't hear the answer anyway, thanks to the roaring in his ears.

He was driving much too fast along the Marylebone Road. The exertion of steering, of concentrating, was leaving him wringing with sweat, which dripped from him as he leaned forward, crippled with exhaustion. It took every last ounce of energy he had to tap out a rhythm on the wheel, as the music exploded from the speakers.

He turned up the volume as high as it would go. He winced. The cheap speakers distorted the sound, turning the treble into.shattering glass and the bass into a col ision. The music, if it could stil be cal ed that, was shaking the car apart, but he would have made it even louder if he could. He wanted to be bludgeoned by the noise. He wanted to be hypnotised.

He wanted to be anaesthetised...

He swerved into the inside lane, reached for his phone

and pul ed up just past Madame Tussaud's.

He flicked on the hazards turned down the music and

hit the speed dial.

A long queue of tourists was standing in the rain, waiting to get in and gawp at the waxy doppelgangers of pop stars, politicians and sportsmen. And, .of course, mass murderers: the Chamber of Horrors was always the most popular attraction.

Anywhere.

SLEEPYHEAD 333

The violent death gravy train...

She picked up.

'It's me... I'm sorry about yesterday.'

'OK...' Sounding unsure, hedging her bets.

'Look, Anne, everything's changed, fucked up to be honest, and I just wanted to tel you...' Your exboyfriend's off the hook. '... the evidence I thought I had hasn't.., materialised, so just ignore what I said, al right?'

'What about Jeremy?' 'Can I see you later?' 'Is he stil a suspect?'

This time it was Thorne's turn to hesitate too long before replying.

'Can you come over later?'

'Listen, Tom, I won't say I'm not pleased because I am. I'm sorry about yesterday too, though...'

In the background Thorne could hear a doctor being paged. He waited until it had finished. 'Anne...'

'I'l be over about five-ish. I'm on cal tonight so I'l sneak away from here early. Al right?'

It was very al right.

He'd legislated for someineptitude. There had been a little give built into his thinking. But this was way beyond anything he'd imagined.

Fucking morons. Stupid fucking idiots.

It was stupid to expect any kind of equilibrium, he knew that, but this kind of unpredictability was so fucking annoying.

He'd started to feel the depression take hold again the second he'd put the phone down, wrapping itself around 334 MARK BILLINGHAM

him, like a dark, itchy blanket. Making him scratch. Making him smel .

He walked up and down in straight lines. Up one board and down the other. Moving slowly across the room in vertical lines. Up one, his bare feet cool against the bleached floorboards.

Down the other, his toes caressing each knot and whorl of the beautiful y smooth wood. Up and down, his fingers stroking the straight, puckered lines that ran across his stomach.

Up and down, his breathing slowing, the white wal s soothing...

He could rol with the punches. He was adaptable, wasn't he? Champagne or IV. His place or theirs,. Hen nights or night buses. Whatever was necessary. This would not be the perfect way to end it but it would certainly do the trick. His plan, of course, the magic-island scenario, the beautiful by-product of his medical work, had involved a little suffering spread out over a very long time. A lot of suffering, quickly, might prove just as enjoyable.

He picked up the phone to cal her back. She'd be happy he'd cal ed. She'd be thril ed with the invitation. Excited at the hint of what the evening might hold in store. Not as excited as he was, obviously, but then he knew just how

good it was real y going to be.

Time to get proactive.

Time to find a different way of hurting.

Anne managed to get away from Queen Square even earlier than she'd thought, but by the time she got to the flat, around four, Thorne had already spent the best part of six hours bouncing off the wal s.

He'd tried going to bed but it was pointless. Every

SLEEPYHEAD 335

muscle screamed out for sleep but his brain wasn't listening. There was a force in him that was now directionless, an energy desperately seeking an outlet. Though his body felt as weary as it had ever felt, his mind was racing. It roared and rumbled and skidded and slipped from its

track, then spun around and roared away again.

He could confront Bishop with the ring.

Tel him that they'd found incriminating evidence. Plant the fucking evidence...

He could beat a confession out of him. Christ, it would be good to feel the bones in that face shatter beneath his pounding fists and not stop hitting until Bishop hovered somewhere between life and death and felt what it was like to be Alison Wil etts...

' Whatever it takes, Tommy.'

'Helen, I'm so sorry about...'

'It's al right, Tommy. Just get him. You can stil get him, can't you?'

Part of him imagined that Anne would come and kiss it al away, fuck it al away, and he would go to sleep and wake up cleansed.

And that was almost how it happened.

She bounded into his living room like a teenager, and the first smile of his day made his face ache. She told him to lie down and went to make them both tea.

He'd told her once that he didn:t want a mother. Right now he wasn't arguing.

She brought the drinks through to the living room. 'You sounded a bit manic when you cal ed.'

He grunted. When she pul ed away the cushion he was holding across his face, she was relieved to see that he was grinning.

336 MARK BILLINGHAM

'How do you feel?'

'Like I've taken uppers and downers, hundreds of them.'

She handed him his tea. 'Have you ever?'

Thorne shook his head. 'Booze and fags. Honest workingclass drugs.'

'The most dangerous of them al .'

He sipped his tea, staring at the ceiling. 'What I need, I reckon, is about six weeks in one of those nice, cosy rooms you've got on ITU. Just drug me up and lay on some nice, sexy doctor to minister to my needs. Is the room next to Alison available? Do they have Sky? I'l pay, obviously...'

Anne laughed and lowered herself into the armchair.

'I'l let you know when we've got one free.'

'How is she? I didn't know she was back on the ventilator.' Anne looked at him questioningly. 'I went in to see her the other day. You were in a meeting, I think.'

'I know. She seemed a little distracted afterwards...' He ignored the implied question. 'Is she any better?' Anne shook her head, and for the first time felt tired herself. 'She's always going to be prone to inl[ections of this sort. Two steps forward...'

A dance with which Thorne was al too familiar.

Anne raised an eyebrow. 'What did you say to Alison?' Remembering the last time. The photograph he'd kept hidden.

Thorne laughed. A splutter of self-disgust. 'I went to let her know I was about to arrest Jeremy Bishop.'

The smal -talk had lasted about as long as the tea.

The silence that fel between them was in danger of becoming terminal when Anne spoke quietly, not looking at him: 'Why did you think it was him, Tom?'

SLEEPYHEAD 337

Did? Past tense. Not for Thorne.

'It started with the drugs theft obviously. Then the connection to Alison and lack of an alibi for the other kil ings. The physical description, and the car...' He sighed heavily, pushing finger and thumb hard into his eyes and rubbing. 'It's al academic. I've got no evidence and no warrant to go and get any.'

'What did you think you'd find?'

'Typewriter maybe. The drugs probably. Unless he kept them at the hospital, which...'

Anne was suddenly on her feet, pacing around the room. 'You keep going on about these drugs but it just doesn't make any sense. Why the hel would he need to steal drugs in those quantities, Tom? Jeremy works with this stuff every day of his life. If he'd wanted to, he could have taken as much as he liked without anyone ever getting suspicious. He could pocket an ampoule, even a couple, every day for six months and nobody would ever notice. So why draw attention to himself by stealing a huge quantity al in one go? It's only when drugs go missing in those amounts that it's even registered. Jeremy would not have needed to do that, Tom.'