Lazy Bones (13 page)

Stone tried to stand up, to tel those around him that he was calm,

that they could get their bloody hands off him...

Thorne stepped across and knelt down next to Gribbin.

His head had fal en back against the television, one hand scrab

bling at the carpet, bailing itself into a fist. Blood dripped through the fingers of the other hand. On the screen behind Gribbin's head, there was applause as a woman welcomed viewers to her show and invited the studio audience to share their holiday nightmares.

Twenty minutes later, with the inhabitants of the quiet cul-de-sac pressed against their windows, Gribbin was led out, a bloody handkerchief pressed to what was left of his nose.

By teatime, the initial interviews had been completed. Heads were

starting to hang. Though there were stil a few things to check out, it was pretty clear, to Thorne at least, that Gribbin had got nothing whatsoever to do with the murder of Douglas Remfry.

The phone rang just before'eleven. The voice could have belonged to

only one person.

'I think you might have had a bit of luck, Mr Thorne.'

'I'm listening, Kodak.'

'Wel , don't get too excited, because whatever happens we've got to

yourWait ajobfeWfordayS,you but...' it looks good. Remember me joking about doing

Thorne listened. It did sound very promising, but after the fiasco

with Gribbin he found it difficult to get excited. It was hard to see any

thing as more than just another straw to be clutched at. He went into the bedroom and lay down. It was starting to get cooler.

Beneath him, the bracken felt sodden, and above, the sky was dark

ening.

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3 AUGUST, 1976

'Yozt smel . You smel like death. You fucking stink..

Her eyes showed nothing. Not hurt at the accusation, not denial, not pain at the weight of him pressed down on to her arms, his face inches from her own.

He pushed himself off her, moved down to the end of the bed to where the tray had been left untouched.

'I'm fucking sick of this,'he said. 'You want to starve yourself that's up to you, but don't make me cook the shit for you, al right?'

She raised herself up on the pil ow, stared past him.

'What?'he said, shouted. 'What?"

He looked at her for a minute or more. Her face was, as always, blank enough for him to imagine it changing, to create the expression that he knew should be there as large as life. To picture the eyes dropping, the tightness around the lips, and the clenching of the jaw. To see

shane.

He grabbed the plate and hurled it against the wal above her head. She didn't flinch. She didn't blink.

He stopped in the doorway, turned and stared at her. Her eyes flat as glass. Beans running down the wal behind her.

'In court they tried to make out that if you had been raped it was like yozz were asking for it anyway. The dress, other things. They just meant the way you behaved, like you were flirting, coming on to him. They didn't know the half of it, did they? You did ask for it. I know what you did. You literal y asked him for it. Took him, dragged him into that .fucking stockroom and asked him. Told him what you wanted...'

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As he chased the bedroom door behind him, he could hear he; saying the word over and over again.

7f...if..,if..:

She could not hear herself saying it. The sound of the screaming inside her head was al she'd been able to hear for a while.

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EIGHT

Thorne turned right off the Charing Cross Road. Eleven o'clock in the morning or thereabouts and baking hot. He took off his jacket, threw it across his arm as he began walking up Old Compton Street.

Soho was a difficult area to categorise at the best of times, which had probably been its trouble down the years. Was it bohemian or squalid? Characterful or seedy? Thorne knew that today it was al these things and probably the better for it, but it had been a struggle. Four decades on and the vil ains that had run Soho in the fifties and sixties had become trendy.

Thanks to the new wave of British gangster films, Bil y Hil , Jack Spot and their boys, with their sharp suits and slicked-back hair, were now official y iconic. For al their newfound sexiness, it was these men and those who fol owed in the seventies who had driven the resident population of the area away, who had silenced the noisy heart of it.

It was thanks mainly to the gay population that Soho's heart had begun to beat again. Now it was one of the few areas in the centre of the city with a real sense of community; a sense that the horrific bombing of the Admiral Duncan pub a few years earlier had only

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strengthened. Though Thorne had not felt total y comfortable on the few occasions Phil Hendricks had brought him down here drinking, he couldn't deny that there was a good atmosphere to the place

Thorne walked past Greek Street, Frith Street. The Prince Edward Theatre and the awning of Ronnie Scott's off to his right Young men sat outside cafes, enjoying the hot weather, the chance to show off wel -developed bodies. Soho was stir a great place to eat and drink, but for every Bar Italia there was a Starbucks or a Costa Coffee; for every family-run deli, two branches of Pret A Manger...

Thorne suddenly felt hungry and realised that he had a problem.

He knew that he didn't have time to grab an early lunch, but he also knew" that if he ate any later he would run the risk of spoiling dinner, and he was real y looking forward to that...

'Wel , we might as wel ,' Eve had said when he'd cal ed. 'We've

already had breakfast and lunch...'

On the corner of Dean Street was a shop sel ing fetish wear. Thorne stopped and looked at the garish window display. A dummy was clad in rubber. A spiked dog-colIar around the neck and a gas mask obscuring the face. He thought about th photographs of Jane Foley; the reason he was here.

He looked at his watch. He was going to be late...

'Did you real y look at this photo?' Bethel had asked on the phone. 'What?'

Bethel sounded cocky, pleased with himself 'Study it, you know...' Thorne was not in the best of humours. 'I'm tired and I've had a shit day, so get on with it, wil you...?'

'I mean real y look at it, Mr Thorne. In one of your labs or whatever.

Get it on to some state-of-the-art magnifying equipment, break it

down into pixels...'

'This is the Met, Kodak. I haven't even got a fan in my fucking office...'

'I've got some good gear indoors. I use it for airbrushing, you know?

Stuck it on there and bingo['

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'What... ?"

'The picture's shot against a plain white backdrop, al right? Sheet on a rol er, usual kind of thing. Now, there's a smal mark bottom right-hand corner, looks like a smudge, remember?'

'No, I don't ...'

Thorne turned right, then immediately left into Brewer Street. This, more than anywhere in Soho, was where you could see the sleazy and the sophisticated cheek by jowl. The peep show next door to the sushi bar. A place that offered shiatsu massage opposite premises delivering an altogether more intimate type of service.

A bored blonde in a cubicle beckoned him, inviting him into a show that promised a 'live double act'. Thorne wondered if there were any shows that offered dead ones.

'Come on in, love,' the woman said. Thorne smiled and shook his head. She looked like she didn't give a toss. Of course, the sex industry had always been just that, had always been about the money, but Thorne had known hookers who did a better job of disguising it. He'd only ever read about his favourite hooker of al time, but he would have liked to have met her.

A legendary whore cal ed Miss Corbett wh0'd worked these streets in the eighteenth century, and had surcharged her gentlemen an extra guinea for every inch that their 'maypole' fel below the nine inches she deemed satisfactory.

Two hundred and fifty years on and now it was the drugs squad, not vice, who worked these streets every night. The sniffer dogs did what they'd been trained to do but Thorne thought it was pretty much a waste of time and effort. A lot of hard work and resources to nail the odd casual user, the occasional tin-pot dealer if they had a bit of luck...

'You know you're always saying how you need a bit of luck sometimes?'

Thorne had stretched out on the sofa by now, the phone pressed to his ear, the other hand reaching down to rub Elvis's bel y. 'Are you ever going to get to the point, Kodak?'

'Wel , this is it. Your bit of good luck. I scanned the photo into my

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computer, blew it up big time, OK? You can do al sorts of stuff if the quality of the original's decent enough, yeah?' Thorne would have said it was impossible, but Bethel 's voice was actual y getting that littl bit higher as he got more excited. 'So, I pixel ated the bastard, zoomed in, and then I could suddenly see what that brown smudge was. I recognised it, see.'

'Recognised it?'

'It's a burn mark, like a scorch on the white backcloth. I recognised it 'cause I was there when it happened. I was shooting a threesome nine months back and some sil y tart, done a couple of pil s too many, knocks over a big lamp. Fucking whole lot could have gone up, but al it did was leave this big burn mark up the rol er. I remembered the shape of it. Tight fucker that runs the place never bothered to replace it...'

By now Thorne was sitting up. 'Tight fucker's name and address would be good.'

'Charles Dodd. Charlie, real y, but he insists on Charles. Likes to pretend he's posh, even 'though the cunt comes from Canvey Island...'

'Kodak...'

'The place is above a fishmonger's on Brewer Street.'

Thorne knew the shop. 'Right, listen...'

'You'l have to wait a few days I'm afraid, Mr Thorne. He's in Europe. I checked.'

Thorne was thinking it through. Should he wait? Could he get a warrant and turn the place over while Dodd was away...?

'I think I did a pretty good job, Mr Thorne,' Bethel said. 'What d'you reckon?'

'I want to know the second he's back...'

Now, three days since that conversation, Thorne watched Dennis Bethel in the bookshop on the other side of the street. He was browsing through the remaindered art books, though some of his own, slightly racier stuff was almost certainly on sale downstairs.

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Thorne moved to cross the road and was bumped roughly by a man coming fast, from his left. Thorne's response was typical y British. 'Sorry,' he said. The other man grunted, raised a hand and carried on walking.

Bethel was waving at him now from inside the bookshop. Thorne nodded towards the other end of the street and began walking. Bethel put down a coffee-table book of nude freak-show photographs, squeezed out of the shop doorway, and fol owed.

Welch laughed as he strol ed away up Wardour Street. He'd learned a few things during the years he'd spent in various institutions. Never say sorry was one. How to recognise a copper was another...

Since his release he'd spent a lot of the time just walking around. The hostel was depressing, and he'd real y enjoyed being out and about. The weather was amazing; a couple of days out in the open and he'd already got a bit of colour back. If he looked better, less prison pale, he thought that the women who were walking about, wearing next to nothing, looked gorgeous. Seriously horny. Fuck it, if this was global warming then who gave a toss about the ozone layer?

There were windows al along the street with adverts in each for a new film. Welch stopped and looked at a couple that he liked the sound of. Maybe when his dole money came through he might spend a couple of afternoons catching up. He'd enjoyed the cinema before he'd gone inside, tried to see most of the stuff that came out, providing it wasn't too arty.

He'd been to the pictures the night before he was arrested of course. The Blair Witch Project. She'd been al over him then, snuggling up in the scary bits, hand on his knee al the way through. Wel up for it, she was. He could read the signals. It was only later that the bitch decided to change her mind. To fuck him around.

To this day, it amazed him that they could do that. Take a bloke al the way there, get him worked up, get him so as his bol ocks felt like they'd explode and then just turn around and casual y announce that

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they didn't feel like it. That it was too much too soon, or some such crap. He'd decided that it was crap, that she just didn't want him to think she was a slag. That al she needed was a little persuasion...

He'd been gobsmacked when the police had come knocking the next afternoon. Couldn't fucking believe it. He was stil shaking his head while they were taking the swabs.

He could see that the male copper, the detective sergeant, thought it was rubbish, that they were al wasting their time. When he'd told them how randy the sil y bitch had been in the cinema, he was rzodding, for fuck's sake. He could see exactly what had been going on. The woman officer was different, though; she'd had it in for him straightaway.

'Good at reading signals, are you?' she'd said. Her expression blank, the spools on the tape squeaking as they turned in the recorder. 'Tel me what I'm thinking right now...'

'That you'd fancy me if you weren't a dyke?'

Looking into the window, he saw himself smile, remembering her face when he'd said it. The smile faded a little when he recal ed the look on the same face eight' months later; the grin from the other side of the courtroom as he was taken d6wn.

He moved on to the next window. There was a poster advertising the new Bruce Wil is blockbuster. Some new missile and Bruce's cheeky smile and a tasty blonde with fake tits. Maybe next week, the week after, whenever he started getting the dole cheques, he might go and see it. He couldn't afford it just yet. The discharge grant wasn't going to stretch much further and besides, he'd need a fair bit tomorrow night, to pay for the hotel.

'You sure he's in there?'

'He's in there, Mr Thorne. Got back from Hol and yesterday. Went over to pick up a few bits and pieces.'