Lazy Bones (6 page)

Thanks and goodbyes were brisk and Thorne would have had it no other way. Though he hadn't so much as glimpsed a blue prison sweatshirt the whole time they'd been there, he was aware of the prisoners al around him. Beyond the wal s of the Deputy Governor's office. Above, below and to al sides. A distant echo, a heaviness, the heat given off by over six hundred men, there thanks to the likes of him.

Whenever he entered a prison, moved around its green, or mustard or dirty-cream corridors, Thorne mental y left a trail of 42

breadcrumbs behind him. He always needed to be sure of the quickest way out.

For most of the drive back down the M 1, Hol and had his nose buried in a pamphlet he'd picked up on his way out of the prison. Thorne preferred his own form of research.

He eased Johnny Cash at San Quentin into the cassette player.

Hol and looked up as 'Wanted Man' kicked in. He listened for a few seconds, shook his head and went back to his facts and figures.

Thorne had tried, once, to tel him. To explain that real country music was luck al to do with lost dogs and rhinestones. It had been a long night of pool and Guinness, and Phil Hendricks -

with whiclever boyfriend happened to be around at the time - heckling mercilessly. Thorne had tried to convey to Hol and the beauty of George Jones's voice, the wickedness in Merle Haggard's and the awesome rumble of Cash, the dark daddy of them al . A few pints in, he was tel ing anybody who would listen that Hank Wil iams;was a tortured genius who was undoubtedly the Kurt Cobain of his day and he may even have begun to sing 'Your Cheating Heart' around closing time. He couldn't recal every detail, but he did remember that Hol and's eyes had begun to glaze over long before then...

'Fuck,' Hol and said. 'It costs twenty-five grand a year to look after one prisoner. Does that sound like a lot to you?'

Thorne didn't real y know. It was twice what a lot of people earned in a year, but once you took into account the salaries of prison staff and the maintenance of the buildings...

'I don't think they're spending that on carpets and caviar, somehow,' Thorne said.

'No, but stil ...'

It was roasting in the car. The Mondeo was far too oId to have air con, but Thorne was very pissed off at being completely unable to coax anything but warm air from a heating system he'd had fixed

43

twice already. He opened a window but shut it after half a minute, the breeze not worth the noise.

Hol and looked up from his pamphlet again. 'Do you think they should have luxuries in there? You know, TVs in their cel s and whatever? PlayStations, some of them have got...'

Thorne turned the sound down a little and glanced up at the sign as the Mondeo roared past it. They were approaching the Milton Keynes turnoff. Stil fifty miles from London.

Thorne realised, as he had many times before, that for al the time he spent putting people behind bars, he gave precious little thought to what happened when they got there. When he did think about it, weigh al the arguments up, he supposed that, al things considered, a loss of freedom was as bad as it could get. Above and beyond that, he wasn't sure exactly where he stood.

He feathered the brake, dropped down to just under seventy and drifted across to the inside lane. They were in no great hurry...

Thorne knew, as much as he knew anything, that murderers, sex offenders, those that would harm children, had to be removed. He also knew that putting these people away Was more than just a piece of argot. It was actual y what they did. What he did. Once these offenders were ... elsewhere, the debate as to where punishment ended and rehabilitation began was for others to have. He felt instinctively that prisons should never become.., the phrase 'holiday camps' popped into his head. He chided himself for beginning to sound like a slavering Tory nutcase. Fuck it, a few TVs was neither here nor there. Let them watch the footbal or shout at Chris Tarrant if that was what they wanted...

Sadly, by the time Thorne had formulated his answer to the question, Hol and had moved on to something else.

'Bloody hel .' Hol and looked up from the pamphlet. 'Sixty per cent of goal nets in the English league are made by prisoners. I hope they've made the ones at White Hart Lane strong enough, the stick Spurs get from other teams...'

44

'Right...'

'Here's another one. Prison farms produce twenty mil ion pints of milk every year. That's fucking amazing...'

Thorne was no longer listening. He was hearing nothing but the rush of the road under the wheels and thinking about the photograph. He pictured the hooded woman, the make-believe Jane Foley, feeling a stirring in his groin at the image in his head of her shadowy nakedness.

Wherever he got it from...

Suddenly, Thorne knew where he might go to find the answer, at least any answer there was to be found. The woman in that photo might not be Jane Foley, but she had to be somebody, and Thorne knew just the person to come up with a name.

When he started to listen again, Hol and was in the middle of another question.

'... as bad as this? Do you think prisons are any better than they were back in...?' He pointed towards the cassette player.

'1969,' Thorne said. Johnny Cash was singing the song he'd written about San Quentin itself. Singing about hating every inch of the place they were al stood in. The prisoners whooping and cheering at every complaint, at each pugnacious insult, at every plea to raze the prison to the ground.

'So?' Hol and waved his pamphlet. 'Are prisons any better now than they were then, do you think? Than they were thirty-odd years ago?'

Thorne pictured the face of a man in Belmarsh, and something inside hardened very quickly.

'I fucking hope not.'

At a little after six o'clock, Eve Bloom double-locked the shop, walked half a dozen paces to a bright red front door, and was home.

It was handy renting the flat above her shop. It wasn't expensive, but she'd have paid a good deal more for the pleasure of being able 45

to tumble out of bed at the last possible minute, the coffee steaming in her own mug next to the til as she opened up. Every last second in bed was precious when you had to spend as many mornings as she did, up and dressed at half past stupid. Walking around the flower market at New Covent Garden, ordering stock, gassing with wholesalers, while every other bugger she could think of was stil dead to the world.

She liked this time of year. The few precious weeks of summer, when she wasn't forced to choose between working in scarf and gloves or punishing her stock with central heating. She liked closing up when it was stil light. It made the early starts less painful, gave that couple of hours between the end of the day and the start of the evening a scent of excitement, a tang of real possibility.

She closed the door behind her and climbed the stripped wooden stairs up to the flat Denise had wielded the sander and done the whole place in a weekend, while Eve had taken responsibility for the decorating. Most domestic chores got split fairly equal y between them, and though there wire the sulks, the occasional frosty silences that fol owed a pilfered yoghurt or'a dress borrowed without asking, the two of them got on pretty wel . Eve knew that Denise could be quite control ing, but then she also knew there were occasions when she herself needed to be control ed. She tended to be more than a little disorganised and though Den could be Mother Hen-ish at times, it was nice to feel looked after. The endless list-making could get wearing but there zvas always food in the fridge and they never ran out of toilet rol !

She dropped her bag on the kitchen table and flicked on the kettle. 'Oi, Hol ins, you old slapper, you want tea?' Almost before she'd finished shouting she remembered that Denise was going straight out from work, meeting Ben in the pub next to her office. Denise had cal ed the shop at lunchtime, told her she wouldn't be home for dinner, asked her if she fancied joining them.

Eve walked through to her bedroom to put on a fresh T-shirt while

46

she was waiting for the kettle to boil. No, she'd stay in, veg out in front of the TV with a bottle of very cold white wine. She couldn't be bothered to change and go out. It was sticky outside and uncomfortable. She'd feel dirty by the time she got there. The pub would be loud and smoky and she'd only feel like a gooseberry anyway. Denise and Ben were very touchy-feely...

She stared at herself in the mirror on the back of her bedroom door, striking a pose in bra and pants. She saw herself smiling as she thought again about the policeman who had answered the phone a week before. Impossible to picture from just the voice of course, but she'd tried anyway and was pretty keen on what she'd come up with. She was fairly sure that, crime scene or no crime scene, he'd been flirting with her on the phone, and she knew ful wel that she'd been flirting right back. Or had she been the one to start it?

She pul ed on a white, FCUK T-shirt and went back into the kitchen to make her tea.

They'd sent a car round the day after she'd cal ed, to col ect the cassette from her answering machine. She told the two officers that she,d have been more than happy to bring it into the station, but, understandably, they seemed eager to take it with them.

Walking around the flat opening windows, she debated whether a week was quite long enough. She couldn't decide whether she should just turn up, or if it might be better to cal . The last thing she wanted was to look pushy. She had every right of course, being involved, to see what was going on. It was only natural that she should be a bit curious after the business with the phone cal , wasn't it? Surely, going along to enquire if there had been any progress in the case was no more than any other concerned citizen would do.

She suddenly realised that, wandering around the flat, she'd put her tea down and couldn't remember where. Sod it, thekitchen was close and she knew exactly where the fridge was.

Opening the wine, she wondered if Detective Inspector Thorne

47

'That's xvool, the navy one. I'l bloody roast in the navy.'

Thorne took a deep breath, thinking, Please your bloody self. 'Listen, I'm going to come and pick you up on the day and we're stopping the night down there...'

'I'm not going down there in that bloody death-trap you drive...'

'I'l hire a car, al right? It'l be a laugh, we'l have a good time. OK?'

Thorne could hear a clinking, the sound of something metal ic being fiddled with. His dad had taken to buying cheap, second-hand radios, disassembling them and throwing the pieces away.

'Dad? Is that OK? We can talk about the details closer to the day if

you want.' 'Tom?' 'Yeah?'

To Thorne, the silence that fol owed seemed like the sound of thoughts getting lost. Slipping down cracks, just beyond reach and then gone, flailing as they tumbled into darkness.

Final y, there was an engagement, like a piece of film catching, regaining its proper speed. Holes locking on to ratchets.

'Sort that Doctor Who thing out for me, wil you, Son?'

Thorne swal owed hard. 'I'l ask around and cal you tomorrow. OK?'

'Thanks...'

'And listen, Dad, dig out that navy suit. I'm sure it's not wool.' 'Oh shit, you never said anything about a suit...'

5O

22 DECEMBER, 1975

They were both in the kitchen. ,4 few feet apart, and nowhere near each other.

Just a couple of days til Christmas, and from the radio on the window sil the traditional songs did a good job of fil ing the silences. Seasonal stuff from Sinatra or Elvis mixed in with the more recent Christmas hits from Slade and Wizzard. That awful Queen song looked like it was going to be the Christmas Number One. He didn't like it much anyway but he knew that he'd never be able to hear it again without thinking about her. ,4bout her body, before and after. Her face and how it must have looked, Franklin pushing her down among the cardboard boxes...

She stood with her back to him, washing up at the sink. He sat at the table and looked at the Daily Mirror. The newsprint, the soapsuds, the absurdly cheery DJ- things to look at and listen to as, separately, they both went over and over it. Remembering what had happened at the station that morning.

Thinking about the police officer, pacing around the Interview Room,

winking at the WPC in the corner, leaning down on the desk and shouting. He thought about the copper's face. The smile that felt like a slap. She was thinking about the way he'd smel ed.

'Right,' the qfficer had said. 'Let's go over it again.',4nd then, afterwards, he'd said it again. ,4rid again. Shaking his head indulgently when she'd final y broken down, beckoning the WPC

who strol ed across, pul ing a tissue from the sleeve of her unijbrm. ,4 minute or two, a glass of water and then they were back into it. The detective sergeant marching around the place, as if in al his years of training he'd never learned the difference between victim and criminal.

He'd done nothing, said nothing. Wanted to, but thought better of it. Instead, he'd sat and watched and listened to his wife crying and thought 51

stupid thoughts, like why, when it was so cold, when he was buttoned up in his heaviest coat, was the bastard detective sergeant in shirtsleeves? Rings of sweat beneath both beefy arms.

Now there was a choir singing on the radio...

He stood up and walked slowly towards the sink, stopping when he was within touching distance of her. He could see something stifJbn around her shoulders as he drew close.

"You need to .forget everything he said, OK? That sergeant. He was just going over it to get everything straight. Making sure. Doing his job. He knows it'l be worse than that on the day.

He knows how hard the defence lawyer's going to be. I suppose he's just preparing us for it, you know? If we go through it now, maybe it won't be so hard in court.'He took another step and he was standing right behind her. Her head was perfectly stil . He couldn't tel what she was looking at, but al the while her hands remained busy in the white plastic washing-up bowl...