Lazy Bones (4 page)

'Someone he got up the backside o02 The comment came from a moustached DC sitting off to Thorne's left towards the back of the room. Thorne did not know the man. He'd been brought in, like many in the room, from different squads to make up the numbers. His 'bck side' comment got a big laugh. Thorne manufactured a chuckle.

'We're looking at that. Remfry's sexual preference was certainly.for women before he got put away...'

'Some of them develop a taste for it inside, though, don't they?' This time the laugh from his mates felt forced. Thorne al owed it to die away, let his voice drop a little to regain attention and control.

'Most of you lot are going to be tracing the most likely group of suspects we've got at the moment...'

The trainee nodded knowingly. One of the swots. He thought this was some kind of conversation. 'The male relatives of Remfry's rape victims.'

'Right,' Thorne said. 'Husbands, boyfriends, brothers. Sod it, fathers at a push. I want them al found, interviewed and eliminated. With a bit of luck we might eliminate al of them except one. DI Kitson has drawn up a list and wil be doing the al ocations.' Thorne dropped his notes on to a chair, pul ed his jacket from the back of it, almost 27

done. 'Right, that's it. Remfry's were particularly nasty offences. Maybe someone wasn't convinced he'd paid for them...'

The DC with the porno moustache smirked and muttered something to the uniform in front of him. Thorne pul ed on his jacket and narrowed his eyes.

'What?'

Suddenly, he might just as wel have been that teacher, holding out a hand, demanding to see whatever was being chewed.

The DC spat it out. 'Seems to me that whoever kil ed Remfry did everyone a favour. Fucker asked for everything he got.'

It was far from being the first such comment Thorne had heard since the DNA match had come back. He looked across at the DC. He knew that he should slap the cocky sod down. He knew that he should make a speech about their jobs as police officers, their need to be dispassionate, whatever the case, whoever the victim. He should talk about debts having been paid and maybe even diag out stuff about one man's life being worth no more and no less than any other.

He couldn't be arsed. �

Dave Hol and was always happiest deferring to rank or, if he got the chance, pul ing it. When it was just himself and another DC, things were never clear-cut and it made him uncomfortable.

It was simple. As a DC, he deferred to a DS and above, while he was able to large it with trainee detectives and woodentops. Out and about with a fel ow DC, and things should just settle into a natural pattern. It was down to personality, to clout.

With Andy Stone, Hol and felt outranked. He didn't know why and it niggled him.

They'd got on wel enough so far, but Stone could be a bit 'up himself'. He had a coolness, aflashiness Hol and reckoned, that he turned on around women and superior officers. Stone was clearly fit and good-looking. He had very short dark hair and blue eyes and though Hol and wasn't certain, when Stone walked around, it looked as 28

though he knew the effect he was having. What Hol and eras sure of was that Stone's suits were cut that bit better, and that around him he felt like a ruddy-cheeked boy scout. Hol and would probably stil edge it as housewives' choice, but they al wanted to mother him. He doubted they wanted to mother Andy Stone.

Stone could also be over-cocky when it came to slagging off their superiors, and though Hol and wasn't averse to the game himself, it got a bit tricky when it came to Tom Thorne.

Hol and knew the DI's faults wel enough. He'd been on the receiving end of his temper, had been dragged down with him on more than one occasion...

Yet, for al that, having Thorne think wel of him, consider that something he'd done was worthwhile, was, for Hol and, pretty much as good as it could get.

He'd been on the team a lot longer than Andy Stone, and Hol and thought that should have counted for something. It didn't appear to. It had been Stone who'd done most of the talking when they'd shown up bright and early on Mary Remfry's doorstep with a search warrant.

'Good morning, Mrs Remfry.' Stone's voice was surprisingly light for such a tal man. 'We have a warrant to enter and...'

She'd turned away then and, leaving the door open, had trudged away down the thickly carpeted hal way without a word. Somewhere inside a dog was barking.

Stone and Hol and had entered and stood at the bottom of the stairs deciding who should start where. Stone made for the living room where, through the partial y opened door, they could see a silver haired man slumped in an armchair, lost in Kilroy. As Stone leaned on the door he hissed to Hol and, nodding towards the kitchen where Mrs Remfry had seemed to be heading.

'Cup of tea on the cards, you reckon?'

It wasn't:

It seemed odd to Hol and, needing a warrant to seardh a victim's house. Stil , like Stone had said, Remfry was a convicted rapist and the mother's attitude hadn't real y given them a lot of choice. It wasn't just

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the grief at her son's death turning to anger. It was a genuine fury at what she saw as the implication in one particular line of questioning. Considering the manner and circumstances of her son's death, it was

a necessary line to pursue, but she was having no truck with it at al . 'Dougie was a ladies' man, always. A proper ladies' man.'

She was swing it again, now, having suddenly appeared in the doorway of her son's bedroom where Hol and was methodical y going through drawers and cupboards. Mary Remfry, mid-fifties, tugging a cardigan tightly over her night-dress, watched, but did not real y take in what Hol and was doing. Her mind was concentrated on talking at him.

'Dougie loved women and women loved him right back. That's gospel, that is.'

Hol and was considerate going through the room. He would have been whether Mrs Remfry had been watching or not, but he made the extra effort to be respectful as he sorted through drawers ful of vests and pants and thrust a gloved hand into pil owcases and duvet covers. In the short time since his release, Remfry had obviously not acquired much in the way of new clbthing or possessions, but there seemed to be a good deal stil here from the time before he went to prison. There was plenty from before he ever left school...

'He never went short where birds was concerned,' Remfry's mother said. 'Even after he came out they was stil sniffing round. Cal ing him up. You listening to me?'

Hol and half turned, half nodded and, as if on cue, pul ed out a decent-sized stash of porn magazines from beneath the single bed.

'See?' Mary Remfry pointed at the magazines. 'You won't find any men in them.' She sounded as proud as if Hol and was dusting off a degree certificate or a Nobel Prize nomination. As it was, he squatted by the bed, flicking through the pile of yel owing Razzles, Escorts and Fiestas, feeling his face flush, turning away from the proud mother in the doorway. The magazines al dated from the mid- to late eighties, wel before Dougie began his days at Her Majesty's pleasure, banged up with six hundred and fifty other men.

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Hol and pushed the dirty mags to one side, reached back under the bed, and pul ed out a brown plastic bag, folded over on itself several times. He let the bag drop open and a bundle of envelopes, bound with a thick elastic band, fel on to the carpet.

As soon as he saw the address, neatly typed on the topmost envelope, Hol and felt a tingle of excitement. Just a smal one. What he was looking at would probably mean nothing, but it was almost certainly more

significant than fifteen-year-old socks and ancient stroke mags. 'Andy...!'

Mary Remfry wrapped her cardigan a little tighter around herself and took a step into the room. 'What have you got there?'

Hol and could hear Stone's feet on the stairs. He slipped off the elastic band, reached inside the first envelope and pul ed out the letter.

'So we can definitely rule out auto-erotic asphyxiation, then?' DCI Russel Brigstocke, a little embarrassed, looked around the table at Thorne, at Phil Hendricks, at DI Yvonne Kitson.

'Wel , I'm not sure we can rule anything out,' Thorne said. 'Bu I

think the "auto" bit implies that you do it yourself.' ' 'You know what I mean, smartarse...'

'Nothing erotic went on in that room,' Hendricks said.

Brigstocke nodded. 'No chance it was an extreme sex game that went wrong?' Thorne smirked. Brigstocke caught the look. 'What?' Thorne said nothing. 'Look, I'm just asking the questions...' 'Asking the questions that Jesmond told you to ask,' Thorne said. He made no secret of his opinion that their Detective Chief Superintendent had sprung ful y formed from some course that turned out political y astute, organisational y capable drones. Acceptable faces with a neat line in facile questions, a good grasp of economic realities and, as it happened, an aversion to anybody cal ed Thorne.

'They're questions that need answering,' Brigstocke said. 'Could it have been some sort of sex game?'

Thorne found it hard to believe that the likes of Trevor Jesmond had

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ever done the things that he, Brigstocke or any other copper did, day in and day out. It was unimaginable that he had ever broken up a fist fight at chucking-out time, or fiddled his expenses, or stood between a knife and the body it was intended for.

Or told a mother that her only son had been sodomised and stran

gled to death in a grotty hotel room.

'It wasn't a game,' Thorne said.

Brigstocke looked at Hendricks and Kitson. He sighed. 'I'l take your expressions of thinly disguised scorn as agreement with DI Thorne then, shal I?' He pushed his glasses up his nose with the crook of his first finger, then ran the hand through the thick black hair of which he was so proud. The quiff was less pronounced than usual, there was some grey creeping in. He could cut a vaguely absurd figure but Whorne knew that when he lost it, Brigstocke was as hard a man as he had ever worked with.

Thorne, Brigstocke, Kitson, Hendricks th civilian. These four, together with Hol and and Stone, were the core of Team 3 at the Serious Crime Group (W&t). This was the group that made the decisions, formulated policy, and guided the investigations with - and even on occasion without - the approval of those higher up.

Team 3 had been up and running a good while, handling the ordinary cases but specialising - though that was not a word Thorne would have used - in cases that were anything but ordinary...

'So,' Brigstocke said, 'we've got everybody out chasing down al the

likely relatives of Remfry's victims. Stil favourite with everybody?' Nods around the table.

'A long way from odds-on, though,' Thorne said. There were things which bothered him, which didn't quite mesh with the vengeful relative scenario. He couldn't picture an anger carried around for that many years, fermenting into something lethal, corrosive, then manifesting itself in the way it had in that hotel room. There was something almost stage-managed about what he had seen on that filthy mattress. Posed, Hendricks had said.

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And he was stil troubled by the early morning cal to the florist... Thorne thought there was something odd about the message. He couldn't believe that it was simple carelessness, so the only conclusion was that the kil er must have wanted the police to hear his voice on that answering machine. It was as if he were introducing himself.

'What came up at the briefing,' Kitson said, 'the stuff about Remfry turning queer inside? Worth looking into...?'

Thorne glanced towards Hendricks. A gay man who was choosing to ignore the word Kitson had used, or else genuinely didn't give a luck.

'Yeah,' Thorne said. 'Whatever he might or might not have got up to when he was inside, he was definitely straight before he went in. Don't forget that he raped three women...'

'Rape's not about sex, it's about power,' Kitson said.

Yvonne Kitson, together with DC Andy Stone, had come into the team to replace an officer Thorne had lost, in circumstances he tried every day to forget. Of al the murderers he'd put away, Thorne was happy to remember that the man responsible was serving three fe sentences in Belmarsh Prison.

Thorne looked at Phil Hendricks. 'Never mind Remfry, can we be certain the kil er's gay?'

Hendricks didn't hesitate. 'Absolutely not. Like Yvonne says, the tape's got nothing to do with sex, anyway. Maybe the kil er wants us to think he's gay. He may wel be, of course, but we have to consider other possibilities...'

'Whether it was a gay thing or not,' Kitson said, 'he could stil have been set up by someone he did time with, someone with a major grudge...'

Brigstocke cleared his throat, at some level finding this al a bit embarrassing. 'But the buggery...?'

Hendricks snorted. 'Buggery?' He dropped his Mancunian accent and adopted the posh bluster of the gentleman's club. 'Buggery!!'

Brigstocke reddened. 'Sodomy, then. Anal intercourse, whatever. How could you do that if you weren't homosexual?'

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Hendricks shrugged. 'Close your eyes and think of Claudia Schiffer...?'

'Kylie for me,' Thorne said.

Kitson shook her head, smiling. 'Dirty old man.'

Brigstocke was unconvinced. He stared hard at Thorne. 'Seriously, though, Tom. This might be important. Could you?'

'It would depend how much I wanted to kil somebody,' Thorne said.

There was a silence around the table for a while. Thorne decided to break it before it became too serious. 'Remfry went to that hotel wil ingly. He booked the room himself. He knew, or thought he knew, what he was getting into.'

'And whatever it was,' Hendricks added, 'it looks as though he went along with it for a while.'

'Right,' Kitson said. She turned the photocopied pages of Hendricks's post-mortem report. 'No defence wounds, no tissue underneath the fingernails...'

The phone on the desk' rang. Thorne was nearest.

'DI Thorne. Yes, Dave...'

The others watched for a few seconds as Thorne listened. Brigstocke hissed at Kitson. 'Why the fuck did Remfry go to that hotel?'