Scaredy Cat (8 page)

70 MARK BILLINGHAM

Keable nodded at Thorne. He was free to continue. 'Helen Doyle was eighteen years old...' He stopped and watched his col eagues nod with due disgust. He had not paused for effect.

He was feeling the knot in his stomach tighten, slippery and undoable.

Helen was not much older than Calvert's eldest. 'Unlike the other victims she was not attacked in her home. It's a fair bet he didn't do it on the street and the method of kil ing would suggest that he couldn't do it in a car. So where did he take her?' Thorne talked some more. The usual stuff. Obviously they were stil waiting on the results from the forensic team. These were the first real tests they'd been able to carry out and he was hopeful. They should al be hopeful. This might be the breakthrough. It was time to pul their fingers out. They were going to get him. Come on, lads...

The house-to-house was al ocated. There was talk of a tNevision reconstruction. Then chairs were scraped back, sandwiches ordered, and Frank Keable was summoned to the office of the detective superintendent.

'What's the point? He knows I'l have sod-al to tel him until this afternoon.'

'Maybe he just wants to share a power breakfast with you. Mind you, you've already had yours.' Thorne pointed at the ketchup stain on Keable's shirt.

'Bol ocks.' He spat on a finger and tried to rub out the bright red splodge.

'He got it wrong again last night and he doesn't like it,' Thorne said.

Keable looked up at him, stil rubbing, reaching into

his pocket for a handkerchief.

'The way he dumped the girl's body so quickly. He just

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wanted shot of her, Frank. He thought he'd cracked it after Alison and when he botched it again I think it real y pissed him off. He's getting impatient. And he's getting arrogant. He took a big risk snatching this one off the street. These women, these girls, are just bodies to him, dead or alive. He's just carrying out a procedure on them and I think he blames them when he gets it wrong. There's no real violence, but he's angry.'

'If he's in such a hurry to get rid of them, what's the washing al about?'

'I don't know. It's... medical.'

'The fucker probably scrubs up.' Keable snorted. Thorne stared over his head. 'Oh, come on, Tom. Listen, isn't this what we want? Ifhe's getting impatient or whatever, he's far more likely to screw up somewhere and give us what we need to get him.'

'Or just start kil ing faster. It's been twenty-two days since Alison Wil etts was attacked. Susan Carlish was six weeks before that...'

Keable stroked the top of his head. 'I know, Tom.' It was a declaration of efficiency, a statement of competence, but Thorne saw something else: a quiet instruction to calm down. A warning. So often he glimpsed the same thing concealed behind a gentle enquiry or a concerned stare. He'd see it most, of course, when there was a suspect. Any suspect. It scalded him, but he understood. The Calvert case was part of a shared history. Folklore almost, like Sutcliffe. A guilt they al inherited at some level or other. But he'd been part of it and they hadn't. He'd been.., in amongst it.

Keable turned and marched away towards the lift. A car would be waiting to take him across town for the

72 MARK BILLINGHAM

meeting. He pressed the button to go down and turned back to Thorne. 'Let me know as soon as Hendricks gets in touch.'

Thorne watched Keable get into the lift and each shrugged their way through the fifteen seconds of dead time waiting for the doors to close. Keable would tel the chief superintendent that while they were obviously waiting on the results of al the tests, there was the distinct possibility of a breakthrough. Somebody must have seen the kil er taking the girl. This was definitely the break in the case that they needed.

Thorne wondered if they would bother broaching the subject that had hung in the air since the note was discovered on his car. It might have been saying 'come and get me', and dumping Helen Doyle's body so clumsily may wel have been a taunt, but one thing was obvious: the kil er was no longer bothering to disguise what he was doing because he knew they were on to him. If knowing the police had put it together was making him careless, then Thorne was happy that he knew. What real y bothered him was how.

Why can't they fucking wel fix this? They can stick a human ear on a mouse and clone a fucking sheep. They clone sheep, for Christ's sake, which is the most pointless thing ever since how the bloody hel are you supposed to tel when every sheep looks like every other sodding sheep and there's NOTHING

REALLY WRONG WITH ME!

Nothing real y.., wrong.

A stroke. It sounds so soothing, so gentle. Idon'tfeel like I've been stroked by anything. I feel like I've been hit with a jackhammer. My nan had a stroke, but she could talk afterwards. �

Her voice was slurred and the drugs made her go a bit funny. Up to then she'd just wittered on about.., you know, old people's stuff. She never went as far as tel ing complete strangers how old she was at bus stops, but you know the sort of thing. The drugs they put her on turned her into a geriatric performance poet. She'd lie there ranting about how motorbikes were driving through the ward at night and how the nurses al wanted to have sex with her. Honestly, it was hysterical- she was eightysix! But at least she could make herself understood. This man gave me a stroke. Anne told me what he did. Twisted some artery and gave me a stroke. Why can't they just untwist it, then? There must be specialists or something. Fm lying here screaming and shouting, and the nurses wander past and coo at me like I'm taking a lazy afternoon nap in the sun. They must have finished al the tests by now. They must know that Fm stil in here, stil talking to myself, ranting and raving. It's doing my head in! See? I've stil got a sense of humour, for fuck's sake.

74 MARK BILLINGHAM

I was right about Anne and the copper. Thorne. I've met women like Anne before. Always go for the two types of men the ones that spark something off in their brains or the ones that get it going in their knickers. A man who does both? Forget it. I think it's fairly obvious which category her exfal s into. Time to ring in the changes. So the copper's luck's in, if you ask me. I reckon I might have to stick to the brainboxesfrom now on. Tim just sat by the bed this morning and held my hand. He doesn't even bother talking to me any more.

FIVE

Thorne sat perched on the edge of Tughan's desk in the open-plan operations room. As Tughan's hands manoeuvred his mouse and flew across his keyboard, Thorne could almost see the Irishman's back stiffen. He knew he was annoying him.

'Isn't there something you should be doing, Tom?' Phil Hendricks had worked through the night, and even before Keable had settled down to coffee and croissants with the chief superintendent, Thorne had received the intbrmation he'd wanted. Helen Doyle had been heavily drugged with Midazolam and had died as a result of a stroke. In spite of the body's location and the apparent break with his routine, there was no doubt that she had been the kil er's fifth victim. That was pretty much al they knew, other than that Forensics had gathered some fibres from Helen Doyle's skirt and blouse[ Thorne got straight on the phone.

'Any joy on these fibres?'

'Give us a bloody chance.'

'Al right, just give me your best bloody guess, then.' 'Carpet fibres, probably from the boot of the car.' 'Can you get a make?'

'Where do you think this is? Quantico?'

76 MARK BILLINGHAM

'Where?'

'Forget it. Look, we'l get on to it. Something to match

it to would help...'

The change in the pattern bothered Thorne, but they were left trying to answer the same questions. How had he talked his way into these women's houses and perhaps, in Helen Doyle's case, talked her into getting into his car? Helen Doyle's body, like that of Alison Wil etts and Susan Carlish, was unmarked yet ful of drink and drugs. The tranquil iser had to have been administered with alcohol. But how? Had the kil er been watching Helen al night and spiked her drink before she left the pub? That would have been difficult - she was with a large group of friends and, besides, to have got the timing of it right would have been near impossible. How could he have known exactly when the drug would start to take effect? It was stil the best guess, so Thorne had set about rounding up as many people as possible who had been in the Marlborough at the time. This, on top of the general canvassing along Helen's route home, meant that they were going to need every extra body that Frank Keable could deliver. If he could deliver. Thorne was hopeful of finding somebody who'd seen Helen after she'd left the pub. He stil couldn't fathom why the kil er was being so brazen but it made him more optimistic than he'd felt in a long time.

'Is there something I can tielp you with?'

Tughan smiled a lot but his eyes were like something on

a plate. He was as skinny as a whippet and fiercely intel igent, with a voice that could cut through squad-room banter like a scalpel. It was always TUghan's thin lips Thorne imagined whispering into the mouthpiece whenever some lunatic phoned Scotland Yard with a coded

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warning. It wasn't that Thorne didn't appreciate what Tughan was capable of or what he brought to the investigation: Thorne could just about find his way into a file, if he had to, but he couldn't type to save his life and always tbund himself strangely hypnotised by the screensavers. When new evidence came in, Tughan was the man to make sense of it with his col ation programmes and file finders. Thorne knew that if they'd had a Nick Tughan fifteen years earlier instead of a thousand manil a folders.., if they'd had a Holmes computer system instead of an antiquated card index, then Calvert might not have done what he did.

'Hey, Tommy, bugger the Calvert case, what about our case?'

�lbm?'

'Right... sorry, Nick. Have you got a copy of the [.eicester/London matches handy?'

Tughan grunted, scrol ed and double clicked. The printer on the far side of the office began to hum. Thorne had actual y been hoping that Tughan might have had a hard copy lying about.

It would have been quicker to walk across to his own little goldfish bowl and fetch the copy on his desk, but he couldn't begrudge Tughan his little triumphs of efficiency. He begrudged him virtual y everything else, and the feeling was entirely mutual.

'Fhorne stared at the list. Half a dozen doctors who had been on rotation at Leicester Royal Infirmary at the ime of the Midazolam theft and now worked in local hospitals. Anne Coburn's information about the significance of the date had somewhat dampened any enthusiasm for ths line of enquiry, and the discovery of Helen Doyle's body had rightly demanded everybody's attention, but

78 MARK BILLINGHAM

Thorne stil sensed that it might be important. It was possible to look at the date of the drugs theft as significant in quite the opposite way. Might not the kil er (if indeed it was the kil er) have chosen that date to make it look as if he might have come from anywhere when in fact he was working at the hospital? Besides, they were stil working through the far bigger list of al doctors currently on rotation local y so they'd have to get round to this lot eventual y.

Jeremy Bishop's name was second on the list.

Thorne was aware of what could only be described as a smirk on Hol and's face as they rode the lift down to the car park. 'Isn't he Dr Coburn's friend?'

'She knows him, yes. And his alibi certainly checks out theoretical y, yes.'

Jeremy Bishop had unquestionably been responsible for treating Alison Wil etts in A and E.

'But Alison Wil etts was taken to the Royal London for a reason,' Thorne explained, as if talking to a child. 'I want to check exactly when Bishop came on duty in relation to when she was brought in.'

The smirk stayed on Hol and's face. He knew al about Thorne's visit to Queen Square. Was he visiting Alison Wil etts or the doctor who was treating her? He was wel aware that they could have hecked out Bishop with a phone cal or, at the very least, sent somebody else.

Thorne felt no compulsion to explain himself to Hol and any further. As they stepped out at the ground floor and walked towards the car, he tried to convince himself that Bishop's friendship with Anne Coburn, about whom he was thinking more than he should, wasn't the

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main reason he was keen to eliminate him from the enquiry as quickly as possible.

As he tucked into a late breakfast, he thought about how tired Thorne had looked at eight o'clock that morning arriving at work. He'd watched him from the greasy spoon opposite as the policeman leaned against his car for a moment before plodding towards the door. He hadn't considered Thorne the plodding type at al . That was why he'd been so delighted when he discovered that he was on the case. That, and the other obvious reason. Thorne, he'd decided, was definitely dogged. And stubborn. These were qualities he required. Plus, of course, the capacity for being too clever for his own good. He certainly needed that. Al in al , Thorne was perfect. But it had troubled him to see Thorne looking so worn out. He hoped that the fatigue was just physical and that the detective inspector wasn't burning out. No, he was justifiably exhausted after the... demands of the night before. They'd found her quickly. He was impressed. So Thorne had had a rough night. That made two of them.

One out of five. Down from twenty-five to twenty per cent. He'd known straight away, of course. He'd made the necessary phone cal then gone about his business, but it was obvious within a minute or two that she'd let him down. Stupid drunken sow. His. heart, which had been pounding with the oncoming rush of the dash to hospital with another one for the machines, had quickly slowed to its habitual steady thump. Her useless, cholesterol-soaked heart couldn't be bothered to thump at al . What an opportunity he'd given her. But she'd let her sad, sil y little life ebb away. Oh, he'd almost certainly have been seen getting