Lazybones (17 page)

If he was a copper?

Thorne would not have bet on it. In all his years he'd known plenty of bad apples, worked with his fair share of shitbags, but never a killer. It was an interesting idea, a seductive one even, but beyond being convenient in TV shows, it was not much use to him.

He dropped a bunch of envelopes into the bin, those that obviously contained circulars or dreary internal memos going in unopened. He always saved the interesting-looking ones until last…

There were still aspects of the case that bothered him, that he'd flag up at the briefing. The bedding that had been removed for starters. And the other thing. The thought he couldn't articulate, couldn't shape and snap up.

Something he'd read and something he hadn't…

It pretty much amounted to less than fuck all. Not a decent lead, not a bit of luck. He could only hope that some bright spark came up with something useful at the briefing.

When the photographs tumbled out of the white envelope, it took Thorne a few seconds to understand what he was looking at. Then he saw it. Then his heart lurched inside him and began to gallop.

As an athlete's heart rate recovers more and more quickly as his fitness increases, so Thorne reacted less and
less, physically at least, to images like those that would soon be scattered across his desk. The thumping in his chest was already slowing when he reached into a drawer, took out a pair of scissors, and snipped away the elastic band that held the bundle of pictures together. The breaths were coming more easily as he used the tip of a pencil to separate them. By the time he'd decided that he wanted a closer look, remembered where he could find the gloves he needed, his heartbeat was slow and steady again.

There was no longer any visible movement, no judder of the flesh where his shirt stuck damp against his chest…

Thorne stood, moved out into the corridor, and turned toward the Incident Room. As he walked, he felt amazingly calm and clearheaded. Coming to shocking conclusions and making trivial decisions.

The killer was even more cold-blooded than he had imagined…

He was supposed to be seeing Eve later on. Obviously, he would have to call and cancel. Perhaps she would be free tomorrow…

Into the Incident Room, and Kitson was moving across from the right of him, eager to talk about something. He held up a hand, waved her away. The box stood, a little incongruously, on a filing cabinet in the far corner of the room, exactly where he'd remembered seeing it. He pulled out the plastic gloves, like snatching tissues from a cardboard dispenser, revealing the transparent fingers of the next pair.

Holland was behind him, saying something he didn't catch as he turned to walk back…

The briefing, whenever they had it, would certainly be a bit more lively. Whatever Jesmond thought about the route the investigation was taking, it had definitely become heavy going. Those photos, what was in them, would get it started again.

Jump leads.

Not a bit of luck, exactly, but fuck it, close enough…

Thorne walked into his office and straight across to his desk. He knew even as he was doing it, even as he pulled on the gloves and delicately picked up a photo by its edge, that he was probably wasting his time. He had to go through the motions, of course, but the gloves were almost certainly unnecessary. Though he knew the surface of a photograph was as good as any at holding a fingerprint, he also knew that the man who had taken it was extremely cautious. Aside from the prints of postal workers and prison officers, or the hair and dead skin of the victims themselves, they'd got nothing from any of the photos or letters thus far. This was, after all, a killer who removed the bedding from his murder scenes.

Still, everybody made mistakes now and again…

Thorne flicked quickly through the photos. The closeups of the battered and bloodied face, those thin lips thickened, then burst. The movement in the full-length pictures captured in a sickening blur. Pictures taken, unbelievably, while the victim was still alive. Thrashing…

He pushed aside the interior shots and lowered his head, checking to see if the killer had made one mistake in particular. He stared closely at the photo that had been very deliberately placed on the top of the pile. The first picture he had been intended to see. The window of the shop next door…

A killer's little joke.

Thorne was dimly aware of the figures of Holland and Kitson, watching him from the doorway as he squinted at the picture. Hoping to see a distorted image that would probably be worse than useless, but would show him that he was dealing with fallible flesh and blood. Searching in vain for a reflection of the cameraman in a tiny black mirror.

Looking for the killer's face in the eye of a dead fish.

 

“I was wondering how much it would cost to send a bouquet of flowers…”

“Well, we charge five pounds fifty for delivery, and the bouquets start at thirty pounds.”

“Christ, I don't want to spend
that
much. I haven't even kissed her yet…”

Eve laughed. “Are you sure kissing is likely?”

“Definitely,” Thorne said. “She's
well
up for it…”

“Shit, I've got a customer. Better go…”

“Listen, I'm sorry about canceling last night. I couldn't—”

“It's fine. Hold that thought, all right? The kissing, I mean. I'll see you later.”

“Yeah…I can't say what time, though.”

“Call me when you're about to leave. We can just grab a quick drink or something…”

“Right…”

“Seriously, if you
are
ever tempted, flowers wouldn't guarantee kissing.
Chocolates,
on the other hand, will get you just about anything…”

She hung up.

Smiling, Thorne reached inside the bodysuit, dropped the phone into his jacket pocket. He took a long swig from a bottle of mineral water and turned, to find himself confronted by a family of backpackers. Mum, Dad, and two blond children were all sporting backpacks of
decreasing size, and staring at him expectantly from the other side of the cordon. Thorne stared back at them until eventually, having decided that nothing much was going to happen, they wandered away.

Six hours earlier, when there
had
been something they might have been able to tell their friends back home about, the onlookers had been a little harder to dissuade. With the nightclubs emptying and the streets buzzing, a sizable crowd had quickly gathered and gawked from behind the lines of police tape. A hundred yards back toward Wardour Street one way and Regent Street the other, they had stood and watched excitedly. The drunks heckled and the tourists took pictures as the body of Charles Dodd was carried out.

Once the body had been loaded up and taken away, the cordon had been relaxed a little. Now there was just a square of blue tape running from the narrow doorway leading up to Dodd's studio, around to the farthest side of the fishmonger's shop next door. Fluttering ever so gently…

“What's going on in there, mate?”

Thorne looked up at a small, skinny individual with birdshit highlights and an improbable amount of jewelry, nodding at him from behind the tape. The man, who was wearing satin tracksuit bottoms and a sleeveless camouflage vest, took three drags of a cigarette in quick succession, then flicked it into the gutter.

“It's a raid,” Thorne said. “Fashion Police. I'd be on my way, if I were you…”

The man bounced twice on the balls of his feet, grimaced, and jogged away. On the other side of the narrow street, a girl in a tiny leather skirt and crop top was leaning against the kiosk of a peep show, eating a bacon sandwich. She grinned over at Thorne, having clearly heard the exchange. Thorne smiled back at her. It was a
little after nine in the morning but evidently not too early to try to get something going inside the shorts of the passing male trade. Already warm enough for the tables of a pavement café to be filled with customers downing cappuccino and munching on pastries. Pretending they were somewhere more exotic.

Thorne watched them. Wishing
he
was somewhere else. Thinking of things that would put anybody off their breakfast…

When they'd battered down the door early the previous evening, Thorne had known exactly what they would find. The smell, thick against his face mask, would have told him anyway, but as he'd climbed the narrow staircase, Thorne had been very well aware of what was waiting for him at the top. He'd already seen the pictures.

The real thing, several long, hot days after the event, was a whole lot worse.

The body had been strung up. The washing line had been tied in a makeshift noose around Dodd's neck and thrown over one of the lighting bars above the studio floor. It was tied off around the foot of the bed, the weight of the body lifting one end of the bed twelve inches off the ground. The pictures, taken while Dodd was still alive, had shown the spasms, the desperate clawing at the neck and kicking of the legs. Several days dead, the corpse hung, stiff and still. It was only the rumble of the tube trains passing beneath them on the Bakerloo Line that caused the slightest tremor, that made the body start to swing just a little…

Each time, Thorne had fought a bizarre urge to stop the movement. To step across and grasp the legs that protruded from dirty shorts like bloated blood sausages. To clutch the feet, purple with lividity, straining against the straps of the plastic sandals.

Thorne had stood by the bed in the middle of the studio, remembering a pair of pale girls, writhing on nylon sheets.

He had watched a scene-of-crime officer leaning across the mattress, scraping at whatever had dripped down from the body that dangled above it.

He had looked up at the tongue that stuck out from Dodd's mouth. Blue, and big as a man's hand. Telling him to fuck off.

Once it had been cut down and loaded up, Thorne had been only too grateful to do precisely as Dodd's corpse had seemed to be requesting. Home for a change of clothes, and food he couldn't finish. Four hours not sleeping, and then back to the murder scene.

Opposite him, the girl finished the last mouthful of her sandwich. She wiped the back of a hand across her mouth, reached down behind the kiosk for her handbag. She shrugged at Thorne and began to apply lipstick.

Thorne turned at the sound of the door opening. Holland stepped out. He moved across to join Thorne, unzipping his bodysuit and gulping down the fresh air as he walked.

“Fuck, it's hot in there.”

Thorne handed Holland the bottle of water. “How much longer?”

“Almost done, I think.”

Holland stood next to Thorne, leaning back against the window of the fishmonger's shop. They stared across at the peep show and the pavement café. A waiter smiled across at them. They might just have been friends enjoying the good weather, their plastic outfits far from being the most outlandish on display.

“So he's probably just cleaning up after himself,” Holland said. “He kills Dodd to make sure he can't say anything.”

“Maybe…”

Holland turned, pressed his hands against the window, already dusted for fingerprints. The fishmonger had been given very little time to get his stock into the freezer room and no time at all to clean up afterward. Holland looked at the pink swirl of blood and fish guts floating on top of the water in a metal tray. “He knew you'd get it.” He nodded toward the window. Flies bumped against the glass, buzzing around the scattered flaps of puckered skin. “He knew you'd understand what that photo meant.”

Thorne nodded. “Oh, he knew I'd been here all right.” Holland looked sideways at him, raised an eyebrow. “Don't get excited. Yeah, he might have followed me, or he
might
be Trevor Jesmond hearing voices from the devil, but I think there's probably a simpler explanation.” Holland turned, listening. “I think you were right. I think Dodd was killed because of what he could tell us. And because he was threatening to.”

“Dodd tried to blackmail the killer?”

Thorne folded his arms. “Only the idiot didn't
know
he was a killer, did he? I can't prove any of it, obviously…”

“It sounds feasible,” Holland said.

“Dodd was lying, of course he was. That crap about the killer keeping his crash helmet on, about not having any records. I should have fucking pulled him on it…”

“You weren't to know.”

“Yes, I was. If people like Dodd are breathing, they're lying. He didn't know who we were after, or why, but that didn't matter. If he thought I was chasing someone who hadn't paid their parking ticket, he'd have lied through his back teeth, as long as he could see a way to make money out of it.”

They watched as a middle-aged man handed over his
money at the peep-show kiosk and hurried inside. The girl caught Thorne's eye, put her thumb to the tips of her fingers, and made a masturbatory gesture. Thorne didn't know whether she was indicating what the man would be doing or what she thought of him. Or what she thought of
them
…

Holland cleared his throat and took a drink. “So, after you come round and show him the photo of Jane Foley, he contacts the killer…”

Thorne stepped away from the window, turned, and looked up toward the second floor, where the studio was. “I've been through the place and there's no sign of an address book or anything like that anywhere…”

“Maybe the killer took it,” Holland said.

“He might have done.” Thorne put his hand up to shield his eyes from the sun. “Let's go over every inch again, anyway. If there's a scrap of paper with an address or phone number on it, I want it found.”

“What about phone records?”

Thorne nodded, pleased that Holland was thinking so fast, was so close behind him. “I've got Andy Stone onto it. I want everything, landline and mobile, if Dodd had one. Every call he made since the day I was here…”

“He might have just gone round, if he had an address…”

“In which case we're stuffed.” Thorne reached across for the water bottle. He took a swig, held the now tepid water in his mouth for a while before swallowing. “We're still none the wiser as to how the killer hooked up with Dodd in the first place. People like Dodd don't advertise. It's word of mouth, it's
contacts
…”

“We've already spoken to everybody we could find,” Holland said. “Anybody who's ever taken so much as a snap of their wife's tits in that studio has made a statement.”

“So talk to them again. And find me some you haven't
spoken to at all.” Holland groaned, let his head drop back against the glass. “Just get on it, Dave,” Thorne said. “Yvonne can work up a new list. I'll catch up with you later.”

While Holland climbed out of his bodysuit, Thorne watched as two young media types stood up from their table at the café opposite and shook hands. They were dressed casually in shorts and trainers, but their top-of-the-line mobiles and designer sunglasses gave them away. An advertising campaign agreed maybe, or a TV project given the green light.

He wondered if they knew that only a few hundred yards away, in an attic room over a coffee shop on Frith Street, John Logie-Baird had given the first-ever public demonstration of television nearly eighty years before.

Thorne opened the door, took a second or two before heading back inside…

Christ, a commercial break
would
be nice. A catchable made-for-TV killer would be even nicer. He might just as well have
been
a TV cop. For the umpteenth time that morning, Thorne watched a passerby notice him, the bodysuit, the police tape…and look around eagerly for the camera.

 

After the postmortem at Westminster Mortuary, they walked over to a small Italian place near the Abbey. Talked about murder over pizzas and Peroni beer.

“I think Dodd was beaten until he was more or less unconscious,” Hendricks said. “Then the killer tied the line around his neck, tossed it over the lighting bar, and hauled him up.” Thorne nodded, took a swig of beer. “Would have taken a fair bit of strength…”

“So we know he's not a nine-stone weakling. What else?”

“He's a nasty fucker…”

“We knew that already.”

Hendricks poured more chili oil over what he had left of a large pepperoni and cheese. “Dodd wakes up pretty bloody quickly when he works out what's going on, but it's far too late by then. The killer ties the line off, picks up his camera, and starts taking pictures.”

“How long?” Thorne asked.

“He'd have blacked out in a couple of minutes.” Hendricks speared a slice of pepperoni, popped it into his mouth. “Death through cerebral hypoxia pretty quickly afterward…”

Thorne thought about it. Dodd had been a sleazy piece of shit, but he hadn't deserved that. Dancing at the end of a line, like something in the shop next door. Tearing at the flesh of his own neck. Staring through half-closed eyes at the maniac responsible, calmly snapping away, trying to capture his best side…

“When they talk about killers like this, they use words like
organized
and
disorganized,
” Thorne said. “Two basic categories. The ones who plan carefully, who follow an almost ritualized pattern of killing, of cleaning up after themselves. And those who just act on instinct, who don't have as much control over what they're doing…”

“So where does this nutter fit in?”

Thorne put down his knife and fork. There was half a pizza left but he'd had enough. “That's what I was thinking. Part of him is organized. The letters to the men in prison. Dodd needs to be got rid of, so he gets rid of him. The washing line, the lack of forensics, the photos he sent to me…”

“He's getting off on
that,
definitely…”

“Why beat the bloke half to death, though? Dodd's face looked like cheap mince. Why not just smash him across the back of the head, then string him up?” A waitress was hovering, trying not to eavesdrop. Thorne held up his plate. She took it gingerly and moved quickly away. “At some level, they're always angry, you know? I
haven't met a killer yet who wasn't pissed off somewhere about
something.
” Thorne downed the last of his beer. He swallowed, seeing the bodies of Welch and Remfry, the mess that had been made of their necks. Of their insides. “This bloke, though? He's off the fucking scale…”

“You doing anything tonight?” Hendricks wiped his mouth. “I could come over.”

“What?”

Hendricks glanced across to where the waitresses were gathered near the till. “I'm changing the subject. Before they call the police.”