Lazy Bones (2 page)

'No, but whoever thought it up is.'

In the gym, the audience watched as Darren El is moved bal ed-up fists from in front of his face to reveal moist, red eyes. Thorne looked around at those watching. Some looked sad and shook their heads. One or two were taking notes. On the front row, members of El is's legal team passed pieces of paper between them.

'If I said that I felt like a victim, would you laugh?' Darren asked.

The old man looked calmly at him for fifteen seconds or more

before answering flatly. 'I'd want to knock your teeth out.'

'Things aren't always that clear-cut,' Darren said.

The old man leaned across the table. The skin was tight around his mouth. 'I'l tel you what's clear-cut.' His eyes flicked towards his wife as he spoke. 'She hasn't slept since the night you came into our house. She wets the bed most of the time.' His voice dropped to a whisper. 'She's got so bloody thin...'

Something between a gulp and a gasp echoed around the gymna

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sium as Darren dropped his head into his hands and gave ful vent to his emotions. A lawyer got to his feet. A senior detective stood up and started walking towards the table. It was time to take a break.

Thorne leaned across and whispered loudly to Brigstocke. 'He's very good. Where did he train? RADA?' This time, several of the faces that turned to look daggers at him belonged to senior officers...

Ten minutes later, and everybody was mingling in the foyer outside. There was a lot of nodding and hushed conversation. There was mineral water and biscuits.

'I'm supposed to write a report on this,' Brigstocke mumbled.

Thorne waved across the foyer to a couple of lads he knew from Team 6. 'Rather you than me.'

'I'm trying to decide the right word to use, to describe the attitude of certain attending officers on my team. Obstructive? Insolent? You got any thoughts...?'

'I think that was one of the stupidest things I've ever seen. I can't believe people sat there anti took it seriously and I don't care what the results were in sodding Australia: Actual y, no, not stupid. It was obscene. Al those sil y bastards studying every expression on that little prick's face. How many tears? How big were they? How much shame?' Thorne took a swig of water, held it in his mouth for a few seconds, swal owed. 'Did you see her face? Did you look at the old woman's face?'

Brigstocke's mobile rang. He answered it quickly, but Thorne kept on talking anyway. 'Restorative Justice? For who? For that old man and his skeletal wife?'

Brigstocke shook his head angrily, turned away.

Thorne put his glass down on a window sil . He moved suddenly, pushing past several people as he walked quickly towards where he'd seen a group emerging from a doo on the other side of the foyer.

Darren El is had taken his jacket and tie off. He was handcuffed, a detective on either side of him, their hands on his shoulders.

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'Good show, Darren,' Thorne said. He raised his hands and started to clap.

El is stared, his mouth opening and closing, an uneasy expression that had definitely not been rehearsed. He looked for help to the officers on either side of him.

Thorne smiled. 'What do you do for an encore? Always best to finish on a song, I reckon...'

The officer to El is's left, a stick-thin article with dandruff on his brown polyester jacket, tried his best to look casual y intimidating. 'Piss off, Thorne.'

Before Thorne had a chance to respond, his attention was caught by the figure of Russel Brigstocke marching purposeful y across the room towards him. Thorne was hardly aware of the two detectives leading El is away in the other direction. The look on the DCI's face caused something to clench in his stomach.

'You want to restore some justice?' Brigstocke said. 'Now's your chance.' He pointed at Thorne with his mobile phone. 'This sounds like a good one...'

It was cal ed an hotel. They also cal ed MPs 'right', 'honourable' and 'gentlemen'...

The sign outside said 'Hotel', but Thorne knew ful wel that certain signs, in less salubrious parts of London, were not to be taken too literal y. If they al meant exactly what they said, there would be a lot of frustrated businessmen sitting in saunas, waiting for hand-jobs they were never going to get.

The sign outside should have read 'Shithole'.

It was as basic as they came. The maroon carpet, once the finest offcut the warehouse had to offer, was now worn through in a number of places. The green of the rotting rubber underlay beneath matched the mould which snaked up the off-white Anaglypta below the window. A long-dead spider plant stood on the window ledge, caked in dust. Thorne pushed aside the grubby orange curtains, leaned against

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the ledge, and took in the breathtaking view of the traffic inching slowly past Paddington Station towards the Marylebone Road. Nearly eleven o'clock and stil solid.

Thorne turned round and sucked in a breath. Opposite him in the doorway, DC Dave Hol and stood chatting to a uniform - waiting, like Thorne, for the signal to step in and start. To sink both feet deep into the mire.

In different parts of the room, three Scene Of Crime Officers crouched and crawled - bagging and tagging and searching for the fibre, the grain that might convict. The life sentence hidden in a dust bal . The truth lurking in detritus.

The pathologist, Phil Hendricks, leaned against a wal , muttering into the new, digital voice recorder he was so proud of. He glanced up at Thorne. A look that asked the usual questions.

Are we up and running again? When is this going to get any easier? Why don't the two of us chuck in this shit and sit in a doorway for the rest of our lives drinking aftershave? Thorne, unable to provide any answers, looked away. In the corner nearesf him, a fourth SOCO, whose bald head and bodysuit gave him the look of a giant baby, dusted the taps of the brown plastic sink with fingerprint powder.

It was, at least, a shithole with en suite facilities.

Altogether, seven of them in the room. Eight, if you counted the corpse.

Thorne's gaze was dragged reluctantly across to the chalk-white figure of the man on the bed. The body was nude and lay on the bare mattress, the spots of blood joining stains of less obvious origin on the threadbare and faded ticking. The hands were tied with a brown leather belt and pushed out in front of him as he lay, prostrate, his knees pul ed up beneath him, his backside in the air. His head, which was covered in a black hood, was pressed down into the sagging mattress.

Thorne watched as Phil Hendricks moved along the bed, lifted the head and turned it. He slowly removed the hood. From behind, 14

Thorne saw his friend's shoulders stiffen for an instant, heard the smal , sharp intake of breath before he laid the head back down. As a sOCO moved across to take the hood and drop it into an exhibits bag, Thorne took a step forward so that he could see the face of the dead man clearly.

His eyes were closed, his nose smal and slightly upturned. The side of the face was dotted with pinprick-size bloodspots. The mouth was a mask of dried gore, the lips ragged, the whole hideous mess criss-crossed with spittle strings. The stained, uneven teeth were bared and had gnawed through the bottom lip as the ligature had tightened around the neck.

Thorne guessed that the man was somewhere in his late thirties. It was just a guess.

From somewhere above them, Thorne became aware of a rumble suddenly dying - a boiler switching itself off. Stifling a yawn, he looked up, watched cobwebs dancing graceful y around the plaster ceiling rose. He wondered if the other residents would care too much about their morning hot water when they found out what had happened in Room Six.

Thorne took a pace towards the bed. Hendricks spoke without looking round.

'Bar the fact that he's dead, I know bugger al , so don't even ask. Al right?'

'I'm fine. Thanks for asking, Phil, and how are you?'

'Right, I see. Like you only came over here for a fucking chinwag...?'

'You are such a miserable sod. What's wrong with exchanging a few

pleasantries? Trying to make al this a bit easier?'

Hendricks said nothing.

Thorne leaned over to scratch at his anne through the bodysuit. 'Phil...'

'I told you, I don't know. Look for yourself. It seems pretty obvious how he died, but it's not that simple. There's... other stuff gone on.'

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'Right. Thanks ...'

Hendricks moved back a little and nodded towards one of the SOCOs, who moved quickly towards the bed, picking up a smal toolboX as he went, The officer knelt down and opened the box, revealing a display of dainty, shining instruments. He took out a smal scalpel and leaned across, reaching towards the victim's neck.

Thorne watched as the SOCO pushed a plastic-covered finger down between the ligature and the neck, struggling to get any purchase. From where Thorne was standing, it looked like washing line, the sort of stuff you can get in any hardware shop. Smooth, blue plastic. He could see just how tightly it was biting into the dead man's neck. The officer took his scalpel and careful y cut away the line in such a way as to preserve the knot that was gathered at the back of the

neck. This was, of course, basic procedure. Sensible and chil ing. They'd need it to compare with any others they might find. Thorne glanced across at Dave Hol and who raised his eyebrows and turned up his palms. What's happening? How long? Thorne shrugged. He'd been there more than' an hour already. He and Hol and had been over the room, taking notes, bagging a few things up, getting a feel of the scene. Now it was the technicians' turn and Thorne hated the wait. It might have made him feel better, were he able to put his impatience down to a desire to get stuck in. He wished he could say, honestly, that he was itching to begin doing his job, to kick off the process that might one day bring this man's kil er to justice.

As it was, he just wanted to do what had to be done quickly, and get out of that room.

He wanted to strip off the plastic suit, get in his car and drive away. Actual y, if he were being real y honest with himself, he would have had to admit that only part of him wanted that. The other part was buzzing. The part that knew the difference between some murder scenes and others; that was able to measure these things. Thorne had seen the victims of enraged spouses and jealous lovers. He had stared at the bodies of business rivals and gangland grasses. He knew when he was looking at something out of the ordinary.

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This was a significant murder scene. This was the work of a kil er driven by something special, something spectacular.

The room stank of hatred and of rage. It also stank of pride. Hendricks, as if reading Thorne's mind, turned to him, half smiling. 'Just another five minutes, OK? I'm not going to get anything else here...'

Thorne nodded. He looked at the dead man on the bed - the position of him, as if he were paying homage. Had it not been for the belt, for the livid red furrow that circled his neck, for the thin lines of blood

that ran down the backs of his pale thighs, he might have been praying. Thorne guessed that at the end, he probably had been.

The room was hot. Thorne raised an arm to rub a sore eye and felt the tickle as a drop of sweat slid down his ribs then took a sudden, sharp turn across his bel y.

Down below, a frustrated driver leaned on his horn...

Thorne was not even aware that he'd closed his eyes and when he heard a phone ring, he snapped them open, convinced for a few wonderful moments that he'd woken suddenly from a bad dream.

He turned, a little disorientated, and saw Hol and standing next to the bedside table. The phone was an off-white seventies model, the dial cracked, the grimy handset visibly jumping in its cradle. Thorne was now ful y alert but he was stil somewhat confused. Was this a cal for them? Was it police business? Or was it possible that whoever was down at what passed for a reception desk had not been told what was happening and had put a cal er through from the outside? Having met one or two of the staff, Thorne could wel believe that even knowing exactly what had happened, they might stil be dim enough to put a cal through to the occupant of Room Six. If that was the case, it would certainly be a stroke of luck... Thorne moved towards the ringing phone. The rest of the team stood frozen, watching him.

The victim's clothes - it had to be presumed they were the victim's - lay strewn about the floor nearby. Trousers - minus their belt - and 17

underpants were next to the chair. Shirt, crumpled into a bal . One shoe under the bed, up near the headboard. The brown corduroy jacket, slung across the back of a chair next to the bed, had contained nO personal items. No wal et, no bus tickets, no crinkled photographs. Nothing that might help identify the dead man...

Thorne did not know if the phone had already been dusted for fingerprints, and he had no time to check. He reached out to grab a plastic evidence bag from the fat, babyish SOCO and wrapped it around his hand. He held the hand up, wanting silence. He didn't need to ask.

He took a breath and picked up the receiver. 'Hel o...?'

'Oh... hi.' A woman's voice.

Thome locked eyes with Hol and. 'Who did you want to speak to?' He was holding the phone an inch or so away from his ear. and didn't hear the answer properly. 'Sorry, it's not a very good line, could you shout up?' 'Is that any good?'

'That's great.' Whorne tried to sound casual. 'Who do you want to speak to?' '

'Oh... I'm not real y sure, actUal y...'

Thorne looked at Hol and again and shook his head. Fuck. It wasn't

going to be that easy. 'Who am I talking to?'

'Sorry?'

'Who are you?'

There was a short pause before she spoke. The voice was suddenly a little tighter. Confident though, and refined. 'Listen, I don't want to sound rude, but it was somebody there who cal ed me. I don't particularly want to give out...'

'This is Detective Inspector Thorne from the Serious Crime Group ...'

A pause. Then: 'I thought I was cal ing a hotel...'

'You have cal ed a hotel. Could you please give me your name?' He looked across at Hol and, puffed out his cheeks. Hol and was poised, notebook in hand, looking utterly confused.