Lazy Bones (41 page)

Now his body mirrored those he'd seen before. Distorted and dis coloured. In hotel rooms and in dreams...

Thorne lay naked, face down on the floor, knees pul ed up beneath him and hindquarters raised. His head and hands pointed towards 348

the bedroom door. Blood from the knife-wound soaked into the carpet and grew sticky beneath his cheek.

'It didn't matter in the rest of the room,' Thorne said. 'In those hotels, traces just got lost among everybody else's. But you had to get rid of the bedding, didn't you, Eve? That would have been clean, that would just have had traces of you and the victim...'

Though Thorne couldn't see it, Eve smiled. 'Once I got them into

bed, they were helpless. Same as you.'

'I never raped anybody, Eve...'

'It's a bit late, don't you think,' Jameson said. 'To be slotting pieces into your little puzzle? It's rather fucking pointless, considering where you are.'

'Who wants to die ignorant?'

'You can't do much about that,' Jameson said, 'however many answers you get...'

'Is this the pet project you talked about? These kil ings? The thing of your own you wanted to get off the ground...' '

Jameson laughed. 'That's quite funny. Be a damn sight more inter esting than local authority training videos, that's for sure. There you go, there's one more piece of your puzzle. One more thing to make you a bit less ignorant...'

Thorne was already trying to work it out. 'It's how you got into the Register, isn't it? Not sure where the connection is. Social services?'

Eve provided the answer. 'The National Probation Directorate. Specifical y the Sex Offenders and Corrections Unit...'

' Towards a National Information Strategy isn't Citizen Kane; Jameson said. 'But they were more than happy for me to do al the research I needed and their security was very sloppy.

They were somewhat lax about unattended computers, access to databases, that sort of thing. Mind you, that was exactly why they wanted the video made in the first place...'

It suddenly struck Thorne that Jameson had probably been on the list that was compiled of contact numbers for Charlie Dodd. A video 349

production company would not have seemed suspicious, bearing in mind the nature of Dodd's business. Never having known it, Thorne would not have recognised the name of Jameson's company anyway. It diln't matter a great deal now...

'That was fortunate for you,' Thorne said.

'We al need a bit of luck now and again,' Eve said. 'Some of us more than others...'

Thorne lifted his face from the carpet, feeling fibres and tiny pieces of grit sticking to the dried blood on his chin. He took the weight on his forehead and looked back through the gap underneath his arm. Jameson was delving into the rucksack he'd placed on the end of the

bed. Eve stood by his side, her eyes never leaving Thorne.

'We should get this done,' she said.

Thorne saw a flash of blue as Jameson pul ed out the length of washing line, then one of black, which he presu med was the hood. He felt the fear that was the creature in his chest grow heavier. He closed his eyes and saw it climbing, using the slats of his ribcage like a ladder, heaving itself upwards lit-de by little.

As was so often the way, it was the last part of the journey that was proving the most frustrating. It had taken ages to get across the Hol oway Road at the Nag's Head and up to Tufnel Park. Now the ridiculous number of traffic lights and pedestrian crossings on the Kentish Town Road was providing a last-minute annoyance.

Hol and thought about cal ing again. He decided that even if Thorne was off the phone or had turned the mobile back on, he was more or less there now anyway, so there wasn't much point...

Hol and drove down the inside lane, swerving back out right when he came up against a bus and deftly cutting up a black cab in the process. At the next set of lights the taxi came up his inside and the driver wound down his window to give him an earful. Hol and held up his warrant card, told the fat cabbie to luck off and watched, smiling, as he did.

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When the lights changed, Hol and swung into Prince of Wales Road. Thorne's street was the third on the right. He indicated and slowed to a stop, glancing down at the photos while he was waiting for a break in the traffic.

When one final y came, he turned, wondering if they'd even al ow Thorne to be there when they made the arrests.

'It is the most fantastic story though,' Jameson said. 'Maybe I should

write it, change al the names of course, to protect the innocent...' 'Whoever they are,' Thorne said.

'It would be in three parts. Three acts, if you like, same as any classic screenplay...'

'You live and learn.'

'Not for much longer.'

The black thing inside Thorne climbed another rib...

'For the first part we have to go back in time. Flared trousers and shit hair and a piece of scum who probably has both. A man drags a woman into a storeroom and rapes her.'

'Your mother...'

Thorne felt the vibrations as feet moved quickly across the carpet towards him, then the pain of a heel pressing down on to the side of his face. 'Let him tel it,' Eve said.

'The rapist, thanks largely to the police, is found not guilty. The woman suffers a breakdown. Her husband goes mad.' Jameson emptied the facts from his mouth like he was spitting out dirt. 'He kil s her and then himself and their bodies are discovered by their two young children who are subsequently taken into foster care. It's a dramatic start, don't you reckon?'

'That's why I'm here, isn't it?' Thorne said. The shoe came back down across the side of his face and ear. Jameson said something he couldn't make out and the foot was lifted. Thorne turned his head and saw Eve moving back across the room towards her brother. '"Thanks largely to the police", that's what you said. So, I have to die because of 351

the way some fuckwit handled a rape case nearly thirty years ago.' He received no answer. 'Yes? Is that about right?'

'There's no point bleating about life being unfair,' Eve said. 'We're

the 'last people you'l get any sympathy from there...' 'I understand why. I just want to know why me?' 'Because you answered the phone.'

And Thorne saw that it real y was that simple. The message left by the kil er on Eve Bloom's answering machine had always bothered him, and final y he understood why. It had been 'left'

so that Eve had an excuse to cal the hotel - a cal to a murder scene that would be answered by a police officer. The wreaths had been ordered after the subsequent kil ings purely to make it look like part of a pattern.

They had selected their rapists with care. Their final victim, Thorne himself, had been chosen completely at random. He remembered what he'd said to Eve, what she'd said to him, twenty minutes earlier in bed:

'It could easily have been omebody else who answered that phone...' ' Then it could very easily have beeh somebody else who was here now.'

He could stil see the look on her face as she'd said it. He imagined the look on his father's, as he received the news of Thorne's death.

'I've got a great title as wel ,' Jameson said. 'For this sordid little horror story. What do you think of "Out of the Frying Pan into the Fire"'?

'We know about Roger Noble...'

'Oh you do?' For the first time, though Jameson did not raise his voice, Thorne could hear emotion behind it, white-hot and lethal.

'You might know what he did, but you can't know how it felt.' 'Bad enough so that you had to leave.' 'Wel done...'

'To protect your sister...'

'Noble didn't want to hurt me,' Eve said. 'He wanted to hurt my baby.'

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'He made you pregnant?'

Jameson laughed. 'We're back to ignorance. We should have a little bel to ring, or a buzzer, for when you get it wrong or say something stupid. Noble liked boys. The baby was mine.'

'Ours,' Eve said. 'So we left when they tried to make me get rid of

it.'

Thorne realised that it had been shame he'd heard in Irene Noble's voice when she'd stared into her M & S coffee and talked about 'behavioural' problems. It had probably been her idea to move in the first place, to get the abortion performed in a different area, to avoid the scandal...

'What happened to the child?' Thorne asked.

Jameson answered matter-of-factly. 'We lost it. Who knows, when al this is over, we might try again.'

For perhaps half a minute, nobody spoke. Thorne lay in agony, a breeze from somewhere passing across his bare skin. The feeling had gone from his hands, and the thumping of his heart was lifting his chest clear off the carpet.

When al this is over...

He imagined the look that was passing between the two people who planned to kil him. He pictured something tender, an expression of the love between a man and a woman, who talked about having a baby together once he had been raped and strangled to death.

Thorne moaned in pain as he twisted his head across to the other side. 'I'm guessing that the final part of this story involves the murders,' he said. 'Remfry and Welch and Dodd and Southern. Me as the symbolic climax. It's the middle bit that's stil a mystery, after you disappeared. What happened between Franklin and the men in prison? Why did you start kil ing again?'

'Lightning struck twice,' Eve said.

Then the doorbel rang...

Thorne tensed and raised his head, but their speed, their commitment, was overpowering. In a heartbeat they were on him, a knife 353

pressed into each side of his throat, cutting off the breath he'd need before he had a chance to cry out...

Hedricks picked up almost immediately.

'Listen,' Hol and said, 'I'm outside DI Thorne's place and I can't get any reply, but his phone's engaged...'

'He probably left it off the hook, while he's busy giving Eliza Doolittle a good seeing to.'

Hol and felt ice at his neck. 'Sorry?'

'He had a hot date with his sexy florist. I'm not surprised he doesn't

want to answer the door...' 'Oh, Jesus . . .' 'What is it?'

Hol and told Hendricks about the pictures, about Mrk and Sarah Foley. Hendricks announced that he was com!ng straight over. The panic Hol and heard in the pathologist's voice stemmed the rising tide of it he felt in himself.

Then, looking across the' road, he saw the motorbike... 'Dave...?'

Hol and felt the engine that was ticking over within him moving up a gear. 'Listen, Phil, before you leave, get on the phone. Cal Brigstocke and fil him in. Get some back-up round here, now. And an ambulance...'

'What are you going to do?'

Hol and was walking along the pavement, away from Thorne's place. He was thinking about the al eyway that he remembered running along the side of a house three or four doors up.

'I'm not sure...'

He was seeing a face through a crash helmet. Seeing the face of a

kil er, smiling at the lie within the truth.

'I've got a BMW myself...'

Smiling, because BMW make bikes as wel as cars...

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THIRTY-TWO

'Why don't you just get out now while you stil can?' Thorne said. 'You'l spend the rest of your lives in prison. You'l never see each other again...'

Jameson sounded unconcerned. 'Don't get worked up. Whoever that was at your door, they've gone.'

Thorne twisted his head, aimed his voice towards Eve. 'People know you were coming over here, for fuck's sake. There'l be fibres, bits of skin everywhere. In the bed...'

'Of course there wil ,' Eve said. 'I'm your girlfriend. Which is why I'l be the one cal ing the police.'

Thorne was stunned, but he saw immediately that they would get away with it. It was very simple. With Thorne dead, Jameson would kiss his sister goodbye for a while and slip away. On his way out, he would kick in the door that she'd previously left open for him, make

sure there Were signs of a forced entry.

Then she would dial 999...

He had no doubt that Eve would play the part of the traumatised witness and, later, the grieving girlfriend perfectly. He knew al too wel 355

how good she was, how convincingly she would pick up the pieces of her life. He could see the officers fal ing a little bit in love with her as they took her shocking statement.

The idea that they would not be made to pay for his death caused a surge of fury to rush through Thorne. He did not need it, but he felt a jolt of added determination to cling on fiercely to every second. 'Tel me about the lightning, Eve.'

She said nothing, but Jameson took the bait. 'Franklin was always going to pay for what he did. It just took me a while to get round to it...'

Jameson had moved to stand between Thorne and the door. Eve had crossed back to the bed. He presumed that Jameson was stil holding the hood, and the washing line, but he could not be certain. Thorne guessed that Roger Noble had been fortunate;dropping dead when he did. Something in Jameson's voice suggested that, had he stil been alive, Jameson would have 'got round' to him as wel ...

'So why not leave it there?' Thorne asked.

'We did,' Eve said. 'Carried on with the lives we'd made, that we'd remade, for ourselves, until I had orie too many slow dances at a party. Until some piece of shit thought that "no"

meant "yes", and fol owed me home...'

Face down on the carpet, Thorne knew ful wel the expression on her face. He'd seen it before, the night they'd walked across London Fields and he'd told her about the case. Told her things she already knew far better than he did...

'Just think of this bloke as cutting re-offending rates...'

'It would be stupid to ask if you reported the rape to the police,' Thorne said.

Jameson took a step towards him, his black boots moving into Thorne's field of vision. 'Very fucking stupid. We dealt with that one ourselves...'

Thorne remembered the other case Hol and and Stone had pul ed off CRIMINT. A man found raped and strangled in the boot of a car.

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The ligature had been removed, but Thorne could now be pretty certain that it had been washing line.