Lazy Bones (12 page)

Thorne laughed. 'I wish.'

She stubbed out her cigarette, leaned back in her chair and looked at him. 'I'm interested. In what you do.'

He remembered the way he'd felt talking to her in the tea-room. How it had seemed like a long time since he'd spoken to a woman like that. It was a hel of a lot longer since he'd talked about the job. 'Murder cases go cold very quickly...'

'So you need to catch the kil er straightaway?'

Thorne nodded. 'If you're going to get a result it tends to happen in

the first few days. It's been a fortnight already...' 'You never know...' 'I do, unfortunately.'

She pushed her chair away from the table and stood up. 'I need to go and get rid of some of that tea...'

While she was in the toilet, Thorne stared out of the steamy

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window. The cafe was in a side street between Wandsworth Road and Nine Elms Lane. From where he was sitting, Thorne could see the rush-hour traffic moving slowly across Vauxhal Bridge. Cars carrying their occupants north towards Victoria and Piccadil y, or south to Camberwel and Clapham. Towards shops and offices and warehouses where they would moan and joke about another bloody Monday and then not spend it failing to catch a kil er.

It was a close cal , but Thorne would not have swapped places with them.

Eve rejoined him. Above them, a train rumbled by on its way into Waterloo. She had to raise her voice. 'I forgot to ask,' she said, 'how's the plant?'

'Sorry?'

'The aloe vera plant...'

Thorne blinked, remembering the vision that had greeted him on stumbling bleary-eyed into the living room at five o'clock that morning. Elvis, squatting awkwardly atop the smal metal bucket. Keepg his bel y low to avoid the spikes. Looking Thorne straight in the eye a.s

he pissed happily into the white pebbles... 'It's doing fine,' Thorne said. Thorne's phone rang.

'Where are you?' Brigstocke said. 'We've got Gribbin...'

'I'm on my way in...'

'When I say "got him" I just mean we know where he is, al right?

We've got to go and get him. Hol and's waiting on your doorstep...' 'Tel him I'l be back home in half an hour...' 'Where the hel are you?'

Thorne looked across at Eve who smiled and shrugged. 'I've been jogging...'

What does a child-sex offender look like?

Thorne knew this to be a pointless question. Pointless because, truthful y, it was unanswerable. It was also extremely dangerous.

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And yet, people had been taught to believe that they knew the answer. That they should stick their hands up and shout it out. It was always an answer that came too late though, wasn't it?

After the damage had been done and the children had been hurt. After the man had been caught and that first, fuzzy photo had appeared on the front of the newspapers. Then, it was as though everything that people already knew had been confirmed. Of course! It was so bloody obvious, wasn't it? That was what one of those men looked like. Knew it al along...

If it was so obvious, if the evil that these men did was written clearly

across their faces for al to see, then why did they live next door and go undetected? If you could see it in the bastards' eyes, then why did they pass by unnoticed on the streets? Why did they teach your kids? Why were you married to one?

Because, as Whorne knew al too wel , you couldn't see it, no matter

how much you wished that you could or how hard you looked. Nobody looked like a child-sex offender. Everybody did.

Thorne looked like on. And Russel Brigstocke. And Yvonne Kitson...

What Ray Gribbin did not look like was the popular perception of a child-sex offender. He was not your typical, tabloid, kiddie-fiddler. He did not have bad skin or lank, greasy hair. He did not wear thick glasses, carry a bag of boiled sweets or wear a dirty anorak. As wel as the misshapen nose that Douglas Remfry had claimed responsibility for, Gribbin had a shaved head, cold eyes and a smile that said 'fuck right

off'. He was a child-sex offender who looked like an armed robber.

Whatever the hel an armed robber looked like .....

Thorne put the photo together with the other paperwork he had

been studying, and handed the lot across to where Stone and Hol and were sitting in the back seat. Stone looked at the photo. 'Christ, he's not what I expected,' he said.

Thorne said nothing, stared out of the passenger window.

Brigstocke flashed the lights and put his foot down. The car in

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front of them pul ed across to let the unmarked Volvo pass. 'I know what you mean,' he said. 'Looks like the sort who might bear a grudge, though, doesn't he?'

Thorne couldn't argue with that. He watched, slightly dizzy, as the fields of rape and wheat that bordered the M4 flew past at ninety miles an hour. He made himself belch; the reading had made him feel a little sick...

Brigstocke spoke up to get everybody's attention. 'Right, you should al have had a chance to look at the notes by the time we get there...' Thorne wound down his window an inch.

Brigstocke glanced across at him, carried on. 'This is a bit of a kick-bol ock scramble but we didn't have a lot of choice. We're doing this in a hurry but let's al make sure we do it right, shal we?' There were grunts from the two in the back. Thorne turned to look at him. 'Gribbin's got a history of violence and if Remfry's story is to be believed, that's the only time Gribbin's come off worse. He's been picked up with knives on him before, so we're taking no chances...' '

Stone leaned forward, an arm on each headrest, and his face push .ed between the seats. 'How many going in? ....

'Probably be the four of us, plus a couple of the local boys...' Stone nodded, carried on speed-reading the notes.

'Watch out for the woman as wel ,' Brigstocke said. 'Sandra Cook's got plenty of form. Drug abuse, theft, prostitution. She did three months in Hol oway for taking half a DC's face off with her nails...'

Hol and shuffled forward. If Brigstocke had so much as touched the brakes, Hol and would have smashed into the back of his head.

'Patricia Cook's the woman who cal ed up about Gribbin, right?' Stone glanced at him. 'Sandra's sister...'

Thorne took a gulp of cold air and shut his window.

'So, why does she grass up her sister's boyfriend?' Hol and asked. Brigstocke tried to catch Hol and's eye in the mirror. 'That's the other reason we're not fucking around this morning,'

he said. 'Nonattendance is not Gribbin's only violation of his parole conditions.'

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'Shit .. ' Stone had seen it. He held the notes out for Hol and to take.

Thorne turned his head, looked at Hol and. 'There's three people in 'the house, Dave. Gribbin, Cook and Cook's eleven-year-old daughter...'

Thorne swivel ed round again, pul ed his seat belt taut. Beneath it, he could feel his heart start to thump that little bit faster and louder. Around the nape of his neck he could sense the smal est tingle beginning to build. He caught his breath as an insect hit the windscreen in a mess of blood and wings.

It was a horseshoe-shaped cul-de-sac on a modern housing estate,

and the property they were interested in was at the far end...

Thorne looked at the houses as the van slowly made its way past

them up the drive. Taking in the detail, the attempts to personalise and gentrify. The bright, differently coloured front doors; the hanging and The Thistles. Most o'f the houses and garages were empty, the occupants having left for work hours earlier, but stil the occasional curtain twitched. This was probably as exciting as it would ever get.

It was one of those funny towns on the outskirts of the city that couldn't quite make its mind up if it was urban or rural. Twenty-odd miles to the west of central London, it lay uncomfortably between the M25 and the Chilterns. For its population of commuters, the proximity to rol ing hil s and quaintly named vil ages probably made the daily slog up the motorway worthwhile, but it was a different story for their teenage children. No amount of fresh air could make the place any less boring. Antique shops would not prevent them pissing it up the wal on a Friday night and cutting up rough in the centre of town...

Thorne saw a woman staring down at him from an upstairs window.

He read the alarm on her face and watched her back away quickly,

almost certainly heading for the phone. It was understandable. Those

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who peeped from behind curtains on one side of the drive saw a blue Transit van. Those like her, in houses on the other side, could see the four men in jackets, jeans and trainers, who crept slowly alongside it, moving at the same speed, the van's progress masking theirs.

When the van began a long, slow sweep around the curve of the horseshoe, the police officers behind it moved in a similar arc. As it slowed right down, they did the same, and when it stopped and the engine was switched off, the four men gathered into a tight huddle and xvaited.

Five hundred yards away, at the other end of the drive, two police vans had sealed off the entrance. Traffic police kept the vehicles moving as drivers slowed down to gawk. Half a dozen uniformed officers in shirtsleeves moved curious pedestrians along.

Behind the Transit, Thorne listened. He could hear the distant squawk of a two-way. The drone of traffic from the other side of the field behind the estate. Somewhere nearby there was a radio playing. He tuned the sounds out and tried to concentrate on what Brigstogke was saying ... .

'Are we clear?' Brigstocke asked. He looked hard at Thorne, Hol and and Stone. Thorne knew he was looking for focus. Nods al round. This was probably going to be straightforward enough, but it

only took a second for something run of the mil to go very tits up. 'Right...'

A beat, then Brigstocke hammered with his fist on the side of the van and two more officers jumped immediately from the front. The van doors stil swinging, they began sprinting towards the house, the biggest one lugging a heavy, metal door-ram.

Thorne and the others came around from the far side of the van, running. Brigstocke and Stone went immediately left towards the gate at the side; making for the back of the house.

Thorne and Hol and veered away from them, fol owing in the vake of the two from the front of the van...

Grunts, and short breaths, and the pounding of rubber soles across

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tarmac and pavement and grass, and stil the sound of the radio

coming from somewhere...

Whorne came up next to the officers at the front door. He croUched down, ready to spring forward, and nodded. A couple of deep breaths. The big officer gritted his teeth and swung the battering-ram.

'Police...!'

Thorne could hear shouting from inside the house and from around

the back. The door hadn't given. He began kicking at the lock, then moved quickly as the ram was swung into the door again. This time it crashed open and, leading with his forearm, Thorne rushed in.

'Police! Everybody in the property show themselves now...' From behind him, Thorne heard the clang of the battering-ram as it was dropped on to the doorstep. From somewhere-up ahead he

could hear a thump and, upstairs, a woman screaming... A wore, an, Thorne thought. Not a child... 'Anybody here, show yourselW

He saw a long hal way ahead of him. Two, three doors off to his

right ....

'In there!'

He glanced left at the big officer coming past him, at the bulk of his

wide back moving beneath his car coat as he charged up the stairs two at a time.

At the other end of the hal was a kitchen, and through it he could

see Brigstocke and Stone outside the back door. Hol and pushed past

him, ran to open it.

The doors clattered open, smashed in ahead of him. In the first

room, nothing ... He stepped back out into the hal , turned to see

Brigstocke and Stone running towards him. From the second room, a shout... 'Here...'

Thorne shoved his way past the officer in the doorway and burst

into the room. It was smal - a sofa, an armchair, a widescreen TV stil

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on. At the other end was an archway leading off right to another room, a dining room, Thorne guessed.

Gribbin stood next to the armchair, his hands above his head. His face showed nothing. His eyes moved from Thorne's to the doorway through which Sandra Cook was being propel ed by one of the local CID boys. She pushed her way past Brigstocke and Stone, al but dragged Hol and out of the way.

'What the fuck do you want?' she shouted.

Thorne ignored her, turned to look at Gribbin. 'Raymond Gribbin, I'm arresting you in connection with breach of parole conditions, which...'

He stopped and looked towards the archway in the right-hand corner as a figure stepped cautiously through it. One by one the heads of the other seven people crowded into the smal room turned, until everyone was looking at the girl.

'Is everything going to be OK, Ray? I'm scared...'

Gribbin took his hands from above his head, opening his arms as he stepped towards her. 'It's al right, sweetheart...' I.

It al happened in a few seconds. It was a testament to Andy Stone's speed and strength that he was able to do so much before being dragged away by Thorne, Hol and and a screaming Sandra Cook. 'Don't fucking touch her...'

As Gribbin's hands slid across the girl's shoulders, Stone was halfway across the room. He was on him by the time Gribbin was reaching to pul the smal , blond head to his barrel chest, the girl squealing as he pushed her away and turned to defend himself...

Gribbin reached up and grabbed Stone around the col ar, staggering back into the television which tipped against the wal . Stone brought both fists up fast into the thick, tattooed forearms and pul ed them backdown hard as he dropped his head into Gribbin's face. It was then that three pairs of hands grabbed Stone, around col ar, belt and sleeve, yanking him backwards across the armchair as Gribbin dropped to his knees and the girl ran sobbing to her mother.

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