Lazybones (6 page)

 

“Thorne.”

“This is Eve Bloom…”

It took him a second to place the name, the voice. To put the two of them together. “Oh…hello. Sorry, I was miles away. Already thinking about lunch.”

“Is this not a good time? Because…”

“It's fine. What can I do for you?”

“Just being nosy, if I'm honest. Wondered how it was all going. Stupid really, when I haven't the faintest idea what
it
actually is. Just, you know, curious as to whether that tape you took away has helped you…solve…
it!
”

He remembered hearing the amusement in her voice before. The phone in that hotel room, pressed tight to his ear. Happy to hear it this time.

“Fine, but I have to be somewhere about ten minutes ago, so…”

“That's okay, I didn't really mean now anyway…”

“Sorry?”

“What about lunch on Saturday? You can ask me a few pointless questions about answering machines, claim that I'm still helping you with your inquiries, and stick it all on expenses. Twelve-thirty any good…?”

He hung up a few minutes later, just as Yvonne Kitson
strolled back into the office. “What on earth are you grinning about?” she said.

 

“Forget it, Mr. Thorne. No fucking way am I eating duck's feet.”

The fact that Dennis Bethell was built like a brick shithouse and had a voice like a chorus girl on helium made most things he said sound vaguely ludicrous, but this was up there with the best of them…

It had been Thorne's idea. The last time they'd met had been in a pub and the voice, as it often did, had caused something of a scene. A sedate lunch sounded like a better idea and Thorne was fond of this place. The New Moon in the heart of Chinatown served the best dim sum in town. Thorne loved the ritual every bit as much as the food. He enjoyed watching the grumpy-looking old women as they wheeled their trolleys around the place. He liked stopping them, asking them to lift the lids, making his selections.

Thorne had had to explain the system to Bethell, who'd been sitting in a corner looking very confused when he got there. He was twenty minutes late, but Bethell hadn't been difficult to find. He was six feet three with the build of a WWE wrestler, spiky peroxide hair, and a great deal of gold jewelry. Spotting him in a restaurant where the clientele was almost entirely Chinese was not exactly taxing.

Today, Bethell was wearing camouflage combats and a bright blue T-shirt stretched across his enormous chest, bearing the slogan
BITCH
.

“Shark's fin soup and all that, fine. Duck's
feet
? That's horrible…”

“Relax, Kodak,” Thorne had said. He smiled at the old woman as she lifted another bamboo lid. “I'll order for you…”

They'd chatted for a while, Thorne putting his man at
ease but also enjoying the to and fro of it. He was comfortable in these places, around the likes of Dennis Bethell.

Thorne popped a wafer-wrapped prawn into his mouth and slid the photograph of Jane Foley across the table. Bethell wiped soy sauce from his fingers with a napkin and picked it up.

“Nice,” he said. “Very nice…”

Thorne knew that Bethell would be talking about the picture itself. The composition, the lighting. As a hardened pornographer, he was way past appreciation of the models themselves.

“I knew you'd like it,” Thorne said.

“I do. It's very tasty. Who took it?”

“Well, do you know what, Kodak? I said to myself that if anybody could find out for me, it would be you…”

A bit more chat. Business, Bethell said, was booming. Though the dot-com filth merchants had once threatened the likes of him, Bethell was delighted to report that his work was more in demand than ever. Thumbnails from his legendary 1983 “Barnyard” series of pictures were being eagerly downloaded, having acquired almost legendary status among smut surfers…

Dennis Bethell's high-quality porno work had been getting men off for about as long as Thorne had been on the job. From slightly saucy to graphic glamour spreads, Bethell was a deft hand at anything that involved a lens and nipples. He was harmless enough and had been a reliable informant for a good many years. Thorne had come to regard him as one of the city's great eccentrics. A pumped-up East End vaudevillian with a hair-trigger temper, a talent for making girls take their clothes off, and his own catchphrase, “Nothing with children!”

“So, come on, then,” Thorne said. “Is it professional or not?”

Bethell peered at the image, held it up to the light, sucked his teeth. “Yeah, maybe…”

“Not good enough, Kodak.” Thorne raised a finger to attract the attention of the woman behind the small bar. He held up his empty bottle of Tsing Tao, ordering another.

“It's complicated,” Bethell said. “These days there's a huge market for professionally taken stuff that's
made
to look like it was snapped by an amateur. Like it's a picture of someone's girlfriend. See what I mean? Especially with this sort of stuff.”

“What sort of stuff?”

“This S-and-M stuff. Handcuffs and whips and chains. Fetishism.” Bethell held up the picture that Thorne had looked at a hundred and more times. He looked at it again. This one had been taken from above, the woman flat on her face, hands bound behind her back. The hood tied at the bottom this time, like a noose.

“You ever do this sort of thing?” Thorne asked.

By now Bethell had a mouthful of minced crab dumpling. He answered cautiously, as if he thought the question was meant to catch him out somehow. “Yeah, I
have
done. Plenty of these pervy mags around. My stuff's better than this, though…”

“Naturally. Listen, if this
is
a professional job, can you find out who took it?”

“I could ask around, I suppose, but—”

“What about where the film was developed?”

“Waste of time. Unless the bloke's a moron, he'd have done it himself. Digital camera, straight to his PC. Piece of cake…”

“Find out what you can, then. I want to know who the model is and who paid for the shoot.”

Bethell looked pained. “Oh, be fair, Mr. Thorne. A bit of info is all well and good, but that's like doing your job for you. Like being a bloody detective.”

The waitress delivering Thorne's beer giggled at Bethell's despairing squeak and hurried away. Thankfully Bethell didn't catch it.

“Think of it as another string to your bow, Kodak. You might fancy a change of career. The force is always on the lookout for eager young lads like yourself…”

“You can be a right bastard sometimes, Mr. Thorne…”

Thorne leaned across the table and held a chopstick inches away from Bethell's face. “Yes I can, and just to prove it, if you don't do a decent job on this for me, I will come round to your dwelling slash business premises, take your zoomiest zoom lens, and stick it so far up your arse, you'll be taking pictures of your large intestine with it. Pass the prawn crackers, will you…?”

Bethell sulked for a few minutes. Then he picked up the photograph and slid it into the pocket of his combat trousers.

“You really should try one of these duck's feet, Kodak,” Thorne said. “Did you know, they can actually make you swim faster?”

Bethell's eyes widened. “Are you winding me up, Mr. Thorne…?”

 

Welch was standing, waiting in the doorway, when Caldicott appeared at the other end of the landing with the mail trolley. As it got closer, agonizingly slowly, stopping at almost every door, it became clear that Caldicott's face still hadn't healed properly.

One side, from mouth to forehead, was shiny, like it was slick with sweat, and the color of something that might have been skinned. Against the raw, weeping red, the lines of tiny white rings stood out clearly, the ones on
what was left of his lips looking like a row of cold sores…

The mail trolley squeaked that little bit nearer. Caldicott grinning as best he could, the mail round a nice cushy number. A sweetener from the caring sharing screws on the VP wing, after the weeks spent in hospital.

A couple of morons from B-wing had caught him in the laundry room. They shouldn't have been anywhere near the place by rights, should have been locked up, but someone somewhere had turned a blind eye. Left a door open.

One of Caldicott's women had
actually
been a girl. A fourteen-year-old. Caldicott had told Welch, sworn to him that he thought she was older, that he wasn't into meat that tender. Surely, Caldicott pleaded, surely
he
must be able to understand. He must have been in a similar position. I mean, come on, some of the girls around these days! Welch had admitted that, yes, he knew what Caldicott meant and he
had
been there himself, several times, and he mentally thanked his lucky stars that the girl he'd been caught for had been over sixteen, if not by a great deal. Caldicott had probably told
them
as well, the animals down in the laundry room. He'd have pleaded, told them that he thought the girl was older, but they wouldn't have been interested in that kind of bullshit from a pervert. These were men who dealt in facts.

While one held Caldicott calmly by the cock and balls, the other had emptied the dryer, dropping the laundry neatly into the red plastic bucket. Then, his screams unheard or ignored, they had bent Caldicott over and forced his head and shoulders into the massive steel drum, pressing his face down onto the red-hot metal…

Caldicott holding out a letter, a smile pulling the seared skin up and back across his yellowing incisors. Welch, thinking he looks like the phantom of the fuck
ing opera, snatching the envelope and stepping quickly back behind the door…

The envelope has been opened, of course, but he's long past caring about privacy or any of that. He has a few precious minutes alone and the chance to read her letter, the last one he will be forced to read in a tiny room that stinks of his cellmate's shit.

There's another photo. It's the first thing he looks for and he almost shouts out loud when he feels it tucked down between the pages of the letter itself. He pulls it out and slaps it down flat on his chest without looking. Then slowly he lifts it up, little by little, moaning out loud as he catches his first glimpse of her. The hood has gone, but this time her back is to the camera, her head lowered. Just a glimpse of shortish hair, the face hidden. She is sitting on her heels, her wrists fastened securely behind her, the shadows falling across her shoulder blades and beautiful round arse…

The door opens and he is not alone anymore. He quickly draws his knees up to hide the erection and presses the picture flat against his chest again. As his cellmate drops with a grunt onto the bed opposite, Welch is already closing his eyes, every last detail of Jane's nakedness clearly recalled and perfectly visible on the back of his eyelids.

May 7, 1976