Lazy Bones (40 page)

'Jesus,' he said.

Irene stood up. 'What's the matter?'

Hol and flicked through the other photos to make sure, stopping at one in particular and staring at it, elated and terrified. He couldn't hear as Irene Noble continued to ask him what was wrong, didn't see her moving across the room towards him.

Sarah Foley sat at the table, the knife in her hand poised above a cake, the girls either side of her looking far more excited than she did. Just visible in the top right of the picture, Mark stood in the corner of the room. His fingers were curled around the edge of the door, as if he were preparing to throw it open and run through it, or else push away from it, launching himself towards the camera, and Whoever lay beyond it.

Her face was thinner then, and his perhaps a little ful er. The eyes

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were wider and the skin smoother, but that was understandable. These were the faces of children, which had yet to weather, but Hol and was familiar with their expressions.

'He was looking at pictures of people he recognised.

340

THIRTY

Thorne lay in bed, listening hard, trying to ascertain exactly what might be happening from the sounds he could hear coming from doe bathroom... , For the want of anything more original to say, he'd offered Eve a coffee as soon as they'd got back to the flat, hoping she'd turn it down and delighted when she did. She'd gone to the toilet then, and he'd moved around the flat, opening windows, grinning at himself in the mirror like a schoolboy, as he passed the mantelpiece on the way to the stereo. With the first few bars of 'Good Year for the Roses' fil ing the room, Thorne had turned to find her standing only inches away...

They'd half danced, half stumbled through to the bedroom, and col apsed on to the new" mattress. The laughter gave way quickly to more passionate noises as their hands and mouths went to work on each other, the wine and the wait making their movements hungrier, more desperate than they'd been earlier, before they'd left for the restaurant...

Then suddenly, Eve had stopped, and begun to laugh again. She'd pushed herself off the bed, grinned, and announced that she needed 341

another visit to the bathroom. As soon as she'd closed the door behind her, Thorne had stripped quickly and slid beneath the duvet, grateful to have avoided that awkward moment when the love-handles were revealed, but feeling, al the same, that a certain spontaneity had gone...

Now, he could hear nothing through the wal between bedroom and bathroom. Thinking about it, the impetus might have been lost, but no more so than it would have been when the moment came for him to fiddle clumsily around with a condom. He thought about the packet he'd bought the day before, from the machine in the toilets at the Royal Oak. It lay, nestled in the drawer of his bedside cabinet, alongside the athlete's foot cream and indigestion tablets.

He decided that it might save time and trouble if he took a condom out of the packet and laid it ready. As he reached across to open the drawer, a thought struck him. Perhaps she was in the bathroom, riddling clumsily around with a diaphragm...

Thorne heard water running. He sat up a little higher in bed, leaned

his head back against the wal and turned his ear to it.

She was probably brushing her 'teeth...

He wondered whether he should slip out of bed, put on his dressing gown and join her. How would it feel if her teeth were clean, while his mouth stil tasted of curry? Would it seem strange, the two of them spitting into the sink together before they'd so much as felt each other up?

The door opened, and Eve walked back in. She stopped next to the bed and looked down at him. Her clothes were straightened and smooth, as though it were already the fol owing morning and she had come to kiss him goodbye. She looked sexier than anything he could remember, looked as if she found him more attractive than ever, and yet, for a second, Thorne wondered if she was about to turn and leave.

Before he could say anything, she laid her handbag gently down by the side of the bed, took a step back, and began to undress.

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The home number was engaged, so Hol and tried Thorne's mobile. The phone sat on a table in a tiny alcove beneath the stairs, where Hol and fought for space with coats, umbrel as and plastic bags fil ed with boots and shoes.

Irene Noble hovered behind him. 'Who are you cal ing? Are you al owed to tel me?'

'Detective Inspector Thorne. You met him the other day...' 'Oh yes. Perhaps he's got a mobile.'

'I'm trying it now ...' Hol and turned away, suddenly uncomfortable with her so close. In his hurry to make the cal , to pass on what he'd discovered, it hadn't occurred to him that he should real y be doing it privately. He'd been relaxed, enjoying himself. Now he was on duty again, and he knew there were things he had to tel Thorne which Irene Noble shouldn't hear. 'I'm sorry, but you'l have to...'

Hol and heard Thorne's voice tel ing him how sorry he was that he couldn't talk to him, asking him to leave a message. Hol and pressel a button to end the cal . This was a message that he wanted to delivgr personal y.

Stil clutching the photographs of Mark and Sarah Foley, Hol and was out of there in less than a minute.

He thanked Irene Noble as he backed away down the path towards his car, al the time wondering if there was a quicker way back towards north London, tel ing himself that there was no need to go mad, that their suspects had no way of knowing they'd been identified and would not be going anywhere.

The last thing Hol and told Irene Noble, shouting through his open window just before he pul ed away, was that he'd take good care of her photos. In truth, he didn't know when she was likely to see them again. Hol and wOuld show them to Thorne. He would show them to Brigstocke. They would use them to secure a warrant...

Hol and could not know for sure how it would proceed from there, what the timescale would be, how much would be passed on to the 343

media. Every case ended differently. Stil , there was a chance, if they wanted to stem the flow of damaging publicity, and made the arrests over the weekend, that the next time Irene Noble saw the pictures wc;uld be on the front pages of the papers on Monday morning.

'You're gorgeous,' Thorne said, staring down, wanting her. 'I can't

believe it's taken so bloody long to get here.' 'Whose fault is that?' 'Mine, I know.'

'Glad you're here now though?'

'God, yeah.' Thorne grinned. 'I'm thinking about what would have happened if I hadn't answered the phone in that hotel room, when we found the first body. You might have cal ed an hour later. It could easily have been somebody else who answered that phone...'

She shrugged. 'Then it could very easily have been somebody else who was here now.'

Her body felt warm and smooth against his. He was sure, rusty and as inept a reader of signs as he was, that he saw desire in her eyes. Yet a minute before, when he'd pladed a hand for the first time against the naked flesh of her breast, he'd felt a tension. There was a reserve suddenly, which seemed slightly at odds with what Thorne had been led to expect. She'd made al the running, cracked those dirty jokes about the bed, about being up for it. Now, at the last moment, she was revealing herself to be not quite as forward as she pretended to be.

Thorne felt a barrier go up. Fragile and perhaps only a touch away from col apse, and unbearably sexy...

She wanted him to do the work, to be a man. It was as though she longed to submit to him, to herself, but needed a little help. Thorne was massively excited. He could sense what might be waiting, if she al owed herself to go over the edge. More than anything, he wanted to nudge her towards it...

'You're so gorgeous,' he said, and dropped his mouth down on to hers.

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As if on cue, Thorne could hear a song beginning in the other room. This was the one he'd thought would be so perfect. The story of a man whose love for a woman only ended on the day they carried him out of his front door in a box. Thorne let the familiar richness of George Jones's voice rol over him, as he ran his hands across Eve's body.

He was dimly aware of another familiar sound. The bedroom door creaked open, hissing as it moved across the carpet. It was a noise which often disturbed him in the early hours, and one which, tonight of al nights, he could wel do without.

Thorne stopped what he was doing and smiled at Eve, waiting to feel the unwelcome weight of the cat landing on the end of the bed...

Hol and took the Romford Road as far as Forest Gate, then cut over towards Wanstead Flats. This was not an area of London he knew wel . With one hand on the steering wheel and the other holding open the A-Z, he was making up his route as he went. ',,

He'd cal ed Sophie as soon as he'd left Irene Noble's house, explain why he hadn't come home. He'd told her that somethirig important had come up, grateful that it was no longer a lie.

She had told him that she was fired, that she would be getting an early night, but he could hear in her voice that she was less than thril ed. He managed to tel her that he loved her before she put the phone down.

Hol and tried phoning Thorne's home number. It was stil engaged. He dial ed the mobile again, hung up as soon as he heard Thorne's recorded message...

He was doing fifty on the long, straight road that cut across Hackney Marshes. It was another area in this strange part of the city that was green enough on the page of the A-Z, but seemed grim and far from welcoming after dark. He'd feel happier once he picked up the A107 at Clapton. He could see it at the bottom of the page, only a fingernail away from where he was now. Then it was pretty much a straight line up through Stamford Hil and on to the Seven Sisters

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Road. Ten minutes more, past Finsbury Park and across the Hol oway Road, and he would be at Thorne's place.

Once again, he thought about doing the simple thing, and cal ing Brlgstocke. It was probably the correct thing to do, but his first loyalty, as always, was to Thorne. He recal ed an American cop show he and Sophie had watched one evening: NYPD Blue maybe, or Homicide. An officer had talked about giving his partner a 'heads up' on something, when real y he should have taken the matter higher. Thorne wasn't his

partner, of course, but it was stil more or less how Hol and felt. Thorne would be grateful for a heads up on this one...

Surer now of his bearings, Hol and laid the A-Z down on the passenger seat and dial ed Thorne's flat again. He listened to the monotonous beep of the engaged signal, wondering why he wasn't hearing the usual, irritating 'cal -waiting' message.

Hol and had a good idea who Thorne would be talking to. He remembered a night in the Royal Oak when Thorne had been talking about himself and his father, and their 'forty-five-minute conversations about luck al '. Tonight it beas likely to be fuck al and a Spurs win in the opening game of the season. H611and could picture Thorne sitting there listening, a can of supermarket lager on the go, desperately trying to get his old man off the line so that they could both settle down and watch the goals on TV.

Two-one against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. Thorne should at least be in a good mood.

Hol and reached across and retrieved the photographs from beneath the A-Z. He wondered what sort of mood Thorne would be in, twenty minutes or so from now, after he'd taken a look at them...

Thorne froze, in confusion as much as anything, when he turned and saw the man taking off his crash helmet.

'How the fuck did you get in?' Thorne said. For a few dizzy and bewildering seconds, al he could think of was that this was some sort of jealous-boyfriend situation he'd unwittingly got caught up in, and

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that he was about to get involved in a very embarrassing fist-fight. It was the look on the man's face, as much as the knife he was pul ing from his rucksack, that told Thorne something altogether different was happening.

Thorne turned to Eve, whipping his head around fast, and straight into the knife that she held, pointed towards him. The blade sliced a clean line across his chin, the point sinking itself half an inch or so into the soft flesh beneath his jaw.

He cried out, threw himself sideways and began to bleed on to the pil ow.

The man took a step towards the bed.

One smal part of Thorne's brain continued to function rational y, to formulate a thought. The knife was in her bag. The rest of it began to give shape to something dark, to a fear he'd felt before only as something fleeting and skittish, but which was now borne inside him, heavy and hooked beneath his breastbone. He pictured it, alive and feeding in his chest. He felt its strong, thin fingers wrapped around his rib, hanging from them, pul ing him down. .

Thorne lifted his head up and pressed a hand to the gash across his

chin. He tried not to let the terror sound in his voice when he spoke. 'Mark and Sarah...'

At the mention of his real name, a shadow fel across the man's face. 'Move away from my sister, now.'

Thorne shuffled across the mattress, oddly uncomfortable with his nakedness. He watched the woman step, nude and smiling, from the other side of the bed and gather up her clothes.

'Eve, this is so stupid...'

Ben Jameson's eyes moved quickly, from his sister's body back to Thorne. 'Get on to the fucking floor...'

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THIRTY-ONE

While they were preparing him, Thorne tried to take the growing fear, the blood, the pain and keep them somewhere separate. Somewhere he could store them up, stole them into a rage he might be able to use. The rest of his brain was focusing; coming up with answers, putting it together. Adrenaline causing the engine to race...

The two of them worked together quickly and efficiently. Before Thorne could even think about how he might move against them, against the two knives, it became an impossibility. Eve slipped the belt from Thorne's chinos, wrapped it around his wrists until it hurt. Ben manipulated his body, pushing the head down towards the carpet, hoiking up the knees, spreading the calves. They operated as a team, movement and stil ness in sync, one busy while the other held a knife close. Thorne was never more than a few inches away from a blade. Any move, other than those he was instructed to make, was out of the question.