Lazybones (29 page)

“Not just spoken on the phone either,” Holland said. “I'm not sure about the others, but I think Southern might have
met
her.”

They were gathered in Brigstocke's office, prior to a hastily arranged team briefing. Eighteen hectic hours since Thorne had put it together. Since he'd worked out that there
was
a her…

“Go on, Dave,” Brigstocke said.

“I interviewed Southern's ex-girlfriend…”

Thorne remembered reading the statement. “Right. They split up not long before he was killed, didn't they?”

“That's just it. She said that the main reason she dumped him was that she'd heard about some other woman, thought he'd been two-timing her. Somebody told her that Southern had been bragging about it in the pub. Telling his mates he'd picked up this fantastic bit of stuff. Actually…”

“What?”

“I need to look at the statement, but I think Southern supposedly told his mates that she had more or less picked
him
up.”

Thorne looked past Holland, down to Brigstocke's desk, at the series of black-and-white photographs laid out in two lines across it. “Jane Foley,” he said.

“Who
is
she, really?” Kitson said.

“Could be anybody,” Thorne said. “We can't discount any possibility. A model he hired or a hooker. The killer could have used her for the pictures, paid her to make the calls to Remfry and Welch. Given her a bit extra to pick up Howard Southern…”

Brigstocke was gathering his notes together. He didn't believe what Thorne was suggesting any more than Thorne himself did. “No, it's Sarah. The sister. Got to be…”

“Using her mother's name,” Thorne said.

“This is all about the mother,” Holland said. “It's all about Jane.”

Thorne moved toward the desk, correcting Holland as he passed him. “It's all about a
family
…”

“Which means nothing's straightforward,” Brigstocke said. “Which means it's a damn sight more fucked up and impossible to fathom than we can even begin to imagine.”

Thorne was thinking out loud as much as anything. “I'm beginning to imagine it,” he said. “Families can do damage.”

“Are we about done?” Kitson asked suddenly. She moved toward the door without waiting for an answer. “I've got a couple of things to do before the briefing starts.”

“I think so. Everybody clear?” Brigstocke looked at his watch and then at Thorne. The face of the watch was a whole lot easier to read. “Right, we'll start in five minutes, then…”

 

The “missed-call” message had been scribbled on a memo sheet and left on Holland's desk. He screwed the paper up into his fist as he began to dial the number.

“Mrs. Noble? This is Detective Constable Holland. Thanks very much for getting back to me.” He'd meant to chase her up at the end of the day yesterday, but after
Thorne's moment of revelation, things had gone haywire…

“I'm afraid I didn't get your message until quite late,” she said. “And I didn't know whether or not to call you at home.”

“It would have been fine,” Holland said. He probably wouldn't have heard the phone anyway over the sound of the argument he'd been having with Sophie.

“I will get these photos back, won't I?”

“Definitely. We'll take care of them, I promise.”

“You'll need to give me a little bit of time to put my hands on them. They're in the cellar, I think. Actually, it might be the loft, but I'll find them…”

Holland looked over his shoulder. The Incident Room was filling up. There were doubtless still a dozen or more smokers outside somewhere, getting their last lungfuls of nicotine for an hour or two, but most available seats and areas of bare desktop were already taken.

“So what do you think? A day or two?”

“Oh yes, I should think so. I've picked up such a lot of old rubbish over the years, mind you…”

“Once you've got the photos, when can we come and pick them up?”

“I beg your pardon?”

Holland asked the question again, raising his voice above the growing level of hubbub around him.

“Any time you like,” she answered. “I'm not going anywhere.”

 

Thorne was alone in Brigstocke's office. There were only five minutes until the briefing was due to begin. Brigstocke, who would kick things off, was already in the Incident Room. After he'd said his piece, it would be down to Thorne.

He stood before the gallery of pictures on Brigstocke's desk. A series of images carefully designed to tempt and
tease. To offer while at the same time giving absolutely nothing away…

Thorne could not be sure if the woman in the photographs was Sarah Foley. It didn't really matter. She was there and yet she was absent. In most of the shots she was kneeling, her head bowed, or else artfully shadowed. Thorne picked each picture up in turn, studied it, waited in vain for it to tell him something that it had managed, thus far, to keep to itself.

Aside from the powerful, disconcerting message the photos sent to his groin, Thorne saw nothing new.

Even physically, though the promise of submission was constant, little was revealed. In some of the photos the woman looked to have dark hair, while in others it seemed more fair. In two of them the hair definitely looked blond, but it could easily have been a wig. The body itself appeared to change, depending on how it was posed and lit. It was alternately lissome and muscular, its position making it impossible to accurately judge the height or even the build of the woman to whom it belonged.

Sarah Foley, if it
was
her, had not been captured.

Thorne looked at his watch. Another minute and he'd need to get out there. His job was to rev them up, to give the team enough to carry it into the home straight.

The next few days they'd work their arses off, and none more so than him. They'd be going back, as always, checking what they had in light of the new lead, but all the time there was forward momentum. He could already sense it, the hunger that increases when it smells the meal, a collective ticking in the blood. The investigation was picking up speed quickly, starting to race. From this point on, Thorne would make bloody sure nothing else got away from him.

Still, barring an actual arrest, by the weekend he'd be ready for a break. Saturday night with Eve and Sunday
with his old man. He allowed himself a smile. If everything went well on Saturday night, he'd probably be making something of a late start the following morning.

Thorne was guessing that by knocking-off time on Saturday, he'd
need
something to divert him. There were other parts of him,
better
parts, that needed exercising, and he wasn't just talking about sex. It would be good to feel the fizz of it with Eve, the flush and the promise of it. The scary thrill and the wonderful release. He was also looking forward to spending a few hours with his father. He needed to feel that lurch, that welling up of whatever it was his old man could suck into Thorne's chest without trying…

Karim appeared in the doorway, gave him a look.

“On my way, Sam,” Thorne said.

He would speak with real passion to the officers who were waiting for him. He wanted to catch this killer more than ever now, and he wanted to spread that desire around like a disease. He wanted to engineer that heady feeling of desperation and confidence that could sometimes make things happen all by itself.

But he would take care to hold the other feeling inside, the one that had begun to come and go, and cause something to jump and scuttle behind his ribs…

Yes, they were moving quickly. They were suddenly tearing along, they were up for it. But Thorne couldn't help but feel as if something was moving, equally fast and with just as much determination, toward
them.
There was going to be a collision, but he didn't know when or from which direction.

He wouldn't see it coming.

Thorne gathered up the photos from the desk, slipped them into a folder, and walked toward the Incident Room.

They spoke to each other slowly, in whispers.

“Did I wake you?”

“What time is it?”

“Late. Go back to sleep…”

“It's okay…”

“I'm sorry.”

“Were you dreaming about it again?”

“Every bloody night at the moment. Jesus…”

“You never used to have dreams before, did you? I had them all the time, always did, but never you…”

“Well, I'm having them now. With a vengeance.”

“That's an appropriate word.”

“Will they stop, do you think? Afterward?”

“What?”

“The dreams. Will they stop once it's all over?”

“We'll know soon enough…”

“I'm nervous about this one.”

“No need to be.”

“We're less in control of it than with the others. You know? With them we knew what to expect, we knew everything that might happen. That was the advantage of the hotels, they were predictable…”

“It'll be fine…”

“You're right, 'course it will, I know. I wake up like this and I'm still thinking about the stuff in the dream and my head's all fucked up.”

“Is that the only reason you're nervous? Something going wrong?”

“What else would it be?”

“That's all right, then.”

“You'd better be there on time, though…”

“Don't be silly…”

“You'd better fucking be there, all right? Think about the traffic.”

“I never have any problems with the traffic, and I've
always
been there.”

“I know you have. Sorry…”

“What about Thorne?”

“Thorne won't be a problem.”

“Good…”

“I'm so tired. I have to try and get back to sleep now.”

He reached for her, slid an arm across her belly.

“Come here and I'll help you…”

Not a very long time before, on a freezing night when weather and loneliness had seemed meant for each other, Thorne had dialed a number he had copied from a postcard in a news agent's window. He'd driven over to a basement flat in Tufnell Park, handed over a few notes, and watched a fat, pink hand bring him off. He'd heard the woman's less than convincing groans and entreaties, the jangle of the charm bracelet that bounced on her wrist as she worked. He'd heard his own breath, and the low, desperate grunt as he finished.

Then he'd driven home and gone to bed, where he'd done it again himself for twenty-five pounds less…

Now Thorne moved around his office, willing away the last knockings of a muggy Saturday and remembering his hands-on adventure in vice with even less pleasure than he'd felt at the time. It was a measure of how low he had felt then. Of how much he was looking forward to his evening with Eve Bloom.

He would leave Becke House feeling as positive as he had in a long time. Things had moved quickly. The few days since the woman—who might or might not be Sarah Foley—had elbowed her way to the right part of Thorne's brain and to the forefront of his investigation had yielded encouraging results.

They'd reinterviewed Howard Southern's ex-girlfriend, confirmed her story about the other woman,
and quickly managed to turn up several characters claiming to have seen Southern with a woman in the days leading up to his murder. Descriptions were predictably vague and contradictory, “slim” and “fair-haired” being the only adjectives that turned up more than once. A barmaid told how she'd seen the woman drag Southern away into a dark corner, where she was “all over him, but like she wanted him all to herself.” A computer-generated portrait had been produced, but it was flatter and even more anonymous than such things normally were. The woman was no more there—on flyers and posters and front pages—than she was in the photos she had sent the men who were to be killed.

Still, it was progress…

Another line of inquiry involved the possibility that the woman did more than just woo the victims and lure them to their deaths. Though Thorne himself was dubious, it had at least to be considered that she had been present when they were killed.

They had gone back to the hotels in Slough and Roehampton, to the shelter in Paddington, and asked questions. Nothing exciting had turned up when CCTV footage was looked at again, but that was hardly surprising. If Mark Foley had known where the cameras were, then so would she. A woman who'd been working on reception at the Greenwood Hotel on the night Ian Welch was killed
did
remember seeing a blond woman hanging around. She'd thought the woman must have been with the party in the bar, but didn't see her talking to anyone. The receptionist thought she was “funny looking”…

Thorne was not sure
what
role the woman had played. He wondered exactly what they would charge her with when they did find her. “Conspiracy to commit” was probably favorite. Yes, she might have turned up at the hotels, might even have answered the hotel-room doors to the victims, while Mark Foley stood hidden, tighten
ing the length of washing line around his fingers…

Beyond that…?

If this woman
was
Sarah Foley, Thorne could not imagine her watching. He could not imagine her brother
being
watched as he brutally raped another man…

It was dark, unnatural thoughts such as this one that Thorne determined, at least for a night, to dismiss from his mind as he moved through the Incident Room, saying his good-byes.

The doors opened as he reached the lift. Without breaking stride, Thorne walked in and turned to press the button. After a few seconds he watched the room, the desks, the
case
disappear before his eyes as the doors closed…

Thorne stepped from the lift and headed toward the car park, all the time thinking about what he was going to wear later on. He reckoned he'd have about half an hour after he got home before Eve was due. Maybe a bit more, if the traffic was as light as it should be.

 

The BMW cruised up to the barrier, then, fifteen seconds later, moved under it and out onto the road. A Carter Family compilation was selected, and the volume turned up. He wondered what music he should put on later. Would Eve run screaming from the place as soon as she knew about the country stuff?

He was such an idiot. Why had he messed around? Why the fuck had he even
subconsciously
been putting this off?

Thorne was still ludicrously excited by the car, by the shape and the feel and the sound of it. He put his foot down, enjoying the noise of the engine, smiling for several reasons as he accelerated toward the North Circular and home.

Picking up speed…

 

Holland drove across Lambeth Bridge, no more than ten minutes from home. He remembered crossing the river farther east, on Saturday night exactly a week before. Blind drunk and talking nonsense in Thorne's new car.

He thought about the look on Sophie's face when she'd found him later on the bathroom floor. He'd raised his head from the cool porcelain of the toilet and seen nothing he felt comfortable with. What he'd seen on her face was worry, carved in deep, and with the strange clarity that only alcohol can bring, Holland knew that it wasn't for him. For the first time, he saw that she was concerned for herself, and for the baby she was carrying. Concerned that in choosing
him
as the father of her child, she'd fucked up big-time…

The hangover had worn off a damn sight faster than the guilt.

Holland decided that he'd do his bit to make tonight a good one. He'd stop off and pick up a nice bottle of wine for them to have with dinner, to finish off afterward, spread out in front of the TV. Sophie still enjoyed the odd glass of wine. It was supposed to be good for her, though before the pregnancy, she would certainly not have stopped at just the one glass. She'd have happily put away a bottle, while Holland watched as her cheeks began to flush, and waited, never knowing whether she'd become mushy or nasty. Either was fine by him. She'd make fun of him and start to tease, or else she'd wrap herself around him and talk about the future, and either way they'd usually end up making love.

Before the pregnancy…

There was a row of shops just past the Imperial War Museum: a Turkish grocer's, a paper shop, and a small supermarket. As Holland pulled over to the curb, he began to ache with the realization that it was getting hard
to remember what things were like before Sophie became pregnant.

The good things, anyway.

 

It never took him very long to get ready.

He didn't dress up in anything special. There were no pointless rituals, no periods of intense mental preparation, none of that rubbish. He thought about what he was doing, of course he did. He was sensible, he went over it all, but that took no more time than it did to pack his bag.

There wasn't very much to carry. Nothing that wouldn't fit into a small rucksack. Previously, with the ones in the hotel rooms, he'd taken something bigger, a bag he could stuff the sheets and bedclothes into. That wouldn't be necessary this time.

The gloves, the hood, the weapons…

He'd already sharpened the knife, then used it to cut off a length from the reel of washing line. He coiled it up and stuffed it into a pocket at the front of the black leather backpack.

It was funny, the things people carried around with them in bags. Who knew what secrets, what glimpses into people's lives, might come tumbling out if you could empty their backpacks and briefcases, their plastic sports bags and canvas holdalls? For sure, you'd need to sift through a mountain of files and folders, of newspapers and sandwiches in plastic wrap, before you found anything of interest. A ransom note or a blackmail demand. Perhaps the odd dirty mag or pair of handcuffs. Then, if you were lucky, you might find the one bag in ten thousand or a thousand or less that contained a gun or a bloodstained hammer or a severed finger…

You'd almost certainly be surprised if it was a woman's handbag.

He smiled as the last thing went in, and he fastened the strap. Anybody rooting through the bag he was packing would probably just be very embarrassed.

 

Thorne stood staring at himself in the full-length mirror on the back of his wardrobe door. He was trying to decide whether to stick with the plain white shirt or go back to the blue denim when the doorbell made his mind up for him.

On the way to the door, he nudged the volume of the music down just a little. He'd decided, after much soul-searching, that George Jones would suit any mood that might be required. He had some of the quirky fifties songs lined up for now, but was ready to bring out the Billy Sherill stuff from two decades later when the time came. There was surely no more romantic song ever recorded than “He Stopped Loving Her Today”…

Eve marched into the center of the room, cast a quick eye over the place, then over Thorne. “You look very summery,” she said.

She was wearing a simple brown cotton dress that buttoned up the front. “So do you,” Thorne said. He looked down at his white shirt. “I thought about wearing a tie…”

She took a step toward him. “God, we're not going anywhere posh, are we?”

“No…”

“Good. I like the shirt open-necked anyway…”

They kissed, their hands growing busier with every few seconds that passed. As Thorne's fingers engaged with the second button on her dress, Eve broke off and stepped away, smiling. “Now, I don't necessarily think that wild gymnastic shagging on a full stomach is a good idea,” she said. “But I could eat
something,
and I'd definitely like a drink…”

Thorne laughed. “Right, is it a bit warm to eat curry?”

“Curry's good anytime.”

“There's a fantastic Indian round the corner.”

“Sounds perfect.”

“Or there's any number of great places in Islington or Camden. Loads of nice restaurants in Crouch End. You haven't been in my new car yet…”

Eve walked across to the window, fastening her buttons. “Let's go local. It won't be fair if only one of us has had a drink.”

“No argument from me. Let me grab a jacket…”

“Don't bother, we're not going anywhere just yet.”

“No?”

Eve turned from the window, raising her hands to adjust the clips in her hair. Her breasts pushed against the front of her dress, and Thorne could see the redness where she'd shaved under her arms. “I've got something in the van,” she said. “I'll need a hand bringing it in.”

 

It wasn't until Holland looked at the clock on the dash that he realized it had been ten minutes since he'd pulled up outside the flat.

It was just after seven o'clock.

Ten minutes and more of sitting, clutching the plastic bag with the wine inside it, unable to get out of the car.

It was a few minutes after that, when Holland stared, confused for a moment at the small dark patches appearing on his trousers, and realized that he was crying. He lifted his head and squeezed his eyes shut, the next breath a sigh that caught in his throat and became a sob.

Then a series of them, like punches to the heart.

For want of anything else, he wrapped his forearms around the bag, the wine bottle between his face and the steering wheel as his head dropped slowly forward. He
felt the pressure of the bottle through the bag, cold against his cheek, and then, within a few minutes, the bag began to grow warm and slippery with tears, each desperate gasp between sobs sucking the clammy plastic into his mouth…

Like the puking wretch he'd been seven days before, Holland could do nothing but let it come and wait for it to finish.

He cried for himself, and for Sophie, and for the child that would be theirs in five weeks. He wept, guilty and sorry and stupid and scared. The tears whose sting was sharpest, though, that were squeezed out faster and bigger than most, were those he shed in anger at the spineless, selfish bastard he knew he had become.

When it was over, Holland lifted his sticky face up just enough to slide a sleeve across it, like a child. He sat, sniffing and staring up at the flat. Before, a general confusion and some pathetic, nameless fear had been twin hands pressing him down into his seat, preventing him from going inside. Now, although there was nothing vague about the shame he was feeling, like a welt across his gut, it was equally effective.

He couldn't go inside, not yet.

Holland looked down at his briefcase in the passenger footwell. He knew that even if he took work upstairs, tried to get straight into it, the first smile from Sophie would be enough to set him off again.

Maybe he could just drive around…

He reached down and grabbed the case, rummaged inside until he found the sheet of paper he was looking for. He cleared his throat as he took out his phone and dialed the number. Even so, when it was answered, the first word or two he spoke sounded choked and heavy.

“Mrs. Noble, it's Dave Holland here again. I know it's an odd time, but I was wondering if now might be a good time to pop over and pick up those photos…?”