Scaredy Cat (20 page)

'It'l sort itself out.'

'And so wil this business with Alison.'

'It's al right, there won't be an investigation or anything. Nobody's taking it seriously.'

'Except you.'

'If that's what he wants.' The he spat out like something sour.

'Why don't you talk about it, then?"

'Anne, I don't need a doctor. Or a mother.'

She shuffled forward to the very edge of the sofa and leaned forward, her head down.

'Fine. Do you want to go to bed, then?'

Thorne had always thought that spluttering your drink

out when somebody surprised you only ever happened in Terry and June, but he succeeded bril iantly in snorting a decent amount of cheap lager into his lap. The sitcom moment made him laugh uncontrol ably.

Anne laughed, too, but she was also blushing to her toenails.

'Wel , luck... I don't know what you're supposed to say...'

'I think you just said it.'

She slid off the sofa on to the floor next to him. 'So?'

'Wel , these trousers have got Tesco's own lager al over them now. They'l have to come off...'

He leaned across and kissed her. She put down her lager

and placed a hand on his neck. He broke the kiss, looked at

the floor. 'Now, this carpet has unhappy memories and

.i

SLEEPYHEAD 191

I'm stil not a hundred per cent sure I've got the smel of vomit out of it...'

'You smooth-talking bastard.'

'So, the palatial bedroom suite?'

She nodded and they stood up. There was stil a hint of awkwardness between them. Nothing had yet been abandoned, but taking hands would have seemed a little sil y al the same.

Thorne held open the bedroom door. 'I have to warn you, I've got a Swedish virgin in here.'

Anne raised her eyebrows and looked into the room, seeing only a smal fitted wardrobe, a chest of drawers and a neatly made bed. She didn't get it. 'Eh?'

'The bed...' Thorne pul ed her to him. 'It doesn't matter...'

Thorne woke and looked at the clock. It was nearly two thirty in the morning and the phone was ringing. He was instantly wide awake. He slipped out of bed and hurried naked into the living room where the handset was recharging on the base unit just inside the front door. The heating couldn't have been off for very long but the flat was already freezing.

'Sir, sorry it's so late. It's Hol and.'

Thorne pressed the phone tight to his ear and wrapped an arm around his shoulder. He could stil hear Leftfield.

The CD was on repeat and they'd forgotten to turn it off. 'Yes?'

'We might have something here. A woman rang through. She'd seen the reconstruction - waited a couple of

days wondering whether to cal .'

'Go on.'

'Nine months ago a man knocked on her door claiming

192 MARK BILLINGHAM

to be looking for a party. She thought he looked al right you know, friendly enough. She invited him in. He was carrying a bottle of champagne.'

Thorne stopped shivering.

'I haven't got much more than that at the minute, sir. For some reason he left, and she didn't real y think anything of it until the programme. She reckons she can give us a pretty good description, though.' 'Does Tughan know about this?' 'Yes, sir. I've already cal ed him.'

Thorne felt a twinge of annoyance, but he knew that Hol and couldn't have done anything else. 'What did he say?'

'He thought it sounded hopeful.'

'Anything about me?'

He could hear Hol and thinking.

'Don't spare my feelings, Hol and, I haven't got any.'

'There was some crack about you and Miss Wil etts, sir.

I don't real y remember - just a joke, real y.'

Nobody was taking it seriously.

'When are you going to interview her?'

'Myself and DI Tughan are going to see her tomorrow morning.'

Thorne took down the details, scribbling the woman's name and address on a Post-it note next to the phone. The initial buzz was wearing off a little and he could feel the cold again. He wanted to get back to bed.

'Thanks for that, Hol and. One quick thing...'

'Don't worry, sir, I'l cal you as soon as we've seen her.' 'Great, thanks. But I was going to say, if anybody should ask, your girlfriend trapped her hand in a door this morning...'

SLEEPYHEAD 193

He realised as soon as he'd hung up on Hol and that he was terribly awake. He turned off the music and scurried around the living room with a bin liner, picking up empty beer cans. For a second he was tempted to look inside Anne's bag, which stil lay where she'd dropped it. Had she brought a change of clothes with her?

He thought better of it and instead grabbed the spare duvet from the cupboard in the hal and sat on the sofa in the dark.

Thinking.

Things were moving quickly. There had been cases before where he'd felt like an outsider - he would come at things from a different angle - but he was stil , if only nominal y, part of a team. This time it was different. He'd felt good marching out of Keable's office but within minutes he was wondering if he'd done the right thing. He stil wondered.

He knew why he'd walked away. Whatever Keable had told his bosses about politics and personality clashes, it stil came down to judgement.

Their passing of it; his lack of it.

His judgement and theirs, and that of those long gone. But even the judgement of the dead could not always be trusted. Any conviction based on such testimony would surely be flawed.

Only one man could judge him.

And Tom Thorne was the harshest judge of al .

He thought about the woman asleep in his bed. Anne wasn't the first woman he'd slept with since Jan. There had been some drunken fumbling with an ambitious young sergeant and a short fling with a legal secretary - but this was the first time he'd felt frightened afterwards.

Once upon a time Anne had been involved with Bishop. Thorne stil wasn't sure to what extent, but that hardly 194 MARK BILLINGHAM

mattered. The kil er who had al but turned his life upside down had once had sex with the woman who was now, at least for the moment, sharing his bed. He suddenly wondered if Bishop might be jealous. It made sense. The anonymous phone cal , the accusation, had seemed a little.., beneath him. Could the attack here in this room have been, at least in part, a warning to stay away from Anne? On top of everything was there actual y a sexual rivalry? The idea was comforting. It began to give him back a sense of control. He'd felt it slipping away as the anger had swept over him after the accusation about Alison. Now he was calmer.

Back in the hospital. Oh, he'l find out exactly what type I

A man trained to save life was taking it in the name of something Thorne could never understand. Didn't care about understanding.

If Thorne was going to stop him, it was important to maintain the initiative.

He went to fetch the phone, curled up on the sofa and dial ed 141 ...

A few minutes later, he crept back into the bedroom, slid under the duvet and lay there blinking, unable to sleep.

Around four o'clock Anne woke up and did her best to help him.

'How do you feel?"

.4 question I'm asked every day. Sometimes more than once. It's not that I don't understand why. It's that I'd-better-say something kind of thing. Better than sitting there looking at the clock and wondering which nurse gets to wipe my arse, I suppose. It's hospitals. It makes people feel strangely compel ed to buy fruit and breathe through their mouth and ask ridiculous questions. But why questions, for fuck's sake? Don't ask me questions. Tel me things, if you like. I'm a good listener. Getting to be very, very good. Tel me anything you like. Bore me rigid. Sit there and waffle on about how your boss doesn't understand you, or your husband's not interested in sex atv more or you want to travel or nursing's badly paid, or you like to drink in the afternoons but don't - ask - me - things. How do you feel?

It's not like you're actual y expecting an answer, is it? You'd be bored off your tits if I decided to play along. If I wanted to respond with a pithy 'Not too bad, thank you for asking, and how are you?' that would take, at present levels of blinking proficiency and taking into account the fatigue factor, approximately forty-five minutes. Sorry you asked? Wel , don't, then. How do you feel?

Grateful that you're there, don't get me wrong..4l of you. I/Tsitors, nurses popping heads round the door, cleaners. Say hel o. Come in and tel me lies. Just don't be predictable. The on@ reason you're asking, real y, is that you can't tel precisely just by looking at me. Not exactly. I mean, you could take a 196 MARK BILLINGHAM

wild stab in the dark. You could make a pretty good guess. You wouldn't need to phone a friend, would you? I'm lying in hospital. Utterly fucked. I'm hardly going to be over the moon. But most of the time you don't have to ask people how they feel. It's obvious. You can see if someone's happy, or tired, or pissed off because it's there in their face, but my face doesn't give a lot away. It must say something, I suppose, but I can only guess, real y. If there's an expression that says, "Closed; or "Gone to lunch; it's probably there or thereabouts.

How do you feel? OK, then...

Angry. Stupid. Optimistic. Bored. Tired. Awake. Frustrated. Grateful Irritated. Violent. Calm. Dreamy. Shit. Confused. Ignorant. Ugly. Sick. Hungry. Useless. Special. Horny. Pessimistic.

Ashamed. Loved. Forgotten. Freaky. Mislaid. Relieved. Alone. Frightened. Stoned. Dirty. Dead...

Horny? I know, sorry, very strange. But I'm lying here on a sexy mattress that hums and there's that very gorgeous nurse who actual y might not be gay after al . So...

Did I say confused? Yes.

A lot of the time. Like why did Thorne show me apicture of Dr Bishop? I had a feeling he was leading up to something. Maybe it's like when you go deaf or blind and your other senses get better to compensate. Because most of toe's knackered maybe I'm becoming a bit witchy or something. I know he wanted to ask me things but then his phone rang and he talked quietly

and went a bit funny.

Nobody's told me anything yet about what happened. Not

real y. About the crime, I mean. I know what he did to me... But I stil don't know why.

ELEVEN

He got on to the tube at Waterloo. Eight stops, direct, on the Bakerloo line. The carriage was absolutely packed, just the way he liked it. Sometimes he needed to let two or three trains go and wait for the right one. There was no point in squeezing on when the carriage was empty of interest. He watched as the train roared into the station, ignoring his fel ow travel ers as they inched towards the edge of the platform. He scanned each carriage as it moved past him, making his choice.

It might take a few stops before he'd got to where he needed to be but he moved easily through the crowd of commuters. He enjoyed the build-up. He loved negotiating that sweaty knot of pent-up anger and rustling newspapers to get himself into the right position.

It didn't usual y take long to find her.

Today she was tal , only an inch or two shorter than he was. She had dark hair in a bob,. and glasses through which she tried to take in as much of her copy of The Beach as she could under the circumstances. There was always the danger, of course, that she might get off the train before he did. Before he'd had a chance to get close to her. So many of them got off at Oxford Circus or Baker Street. He wasn't too disappointed when that happened. There was

198 MARK BILLINGHAM

always tomorrow. The rush-hour was wonderful y predictable.

He made his first contact as the train stopped at Piccadil y Circus. That wonderful jolt as the train came to a standstil . Thirty seconds later he would get another chance when they pul ed away again. He was behind this one. Sometimes he liked to be face to face. To see their expression as he half looked away or shrugged apologetical y. And he loved the breasts, of course. But this was his favourite. He liked the feel of their behinds against his groin. He could place a sweaty hand in the smal of their backs to steady himself. He could smel their hair.

Best of al , he could turn and look at the person behind him if he needed to, starting a smal wave of accusatory looks and sighs as his excitement mounted.

She'd washed her hair this morning. He wondered whether she'd had sex last night. If she'd showered she would have washed the smel away, which was a shame, but he loved the smel of her hair al the same. And a hint of something else at the nape of her neck. The train slowed and came to a halt in the tunnel between Oxford Circus and Regent's Park. Another lovely little push.

With the train motionless, he thought for a minute about what he had to do today. An interview this morning. He enjoyed those. He liked to run things. He could read people wel , he knew that. But they could never read him.

The train moved off again with a useful jerk. Only four stops to go. Perhaps one more before the big one. She was looking intently at her book, but he knew she was thinking about him.

Despising him. That was fine. Let her think it was over. Let her relax, thinking he'd moved or got off without her seeing. She wouldn't want to look SLEEPYHEAD 199

over her shoulder to check. He'd wait until they left. Marylebone.

The train moved towards his final destination. He was sure that she'd felt every inch of him that time. It was a second, no more, but he'd felt the crack in her buttocks, the cotton of her long black skirt against the polyester of his work trousers. He'd felt her tense up.

Only once had one of them confronted him. She'd moved away and stepped off the train before turning back and screaming at him. Other passengers looked, but he smiled indulgently and held up his hands and let himself get lost in the mle of others getting on the train. Only once. They were pretty good odds. Of course, if it ever came to it, he had a pretty good defence up his sleeve.

This was his favourite moment. One last good one and then away. In that second or two before the doors opened he leaned against her and took everything in. The feeling of his erection against her arse, his face against the back of her head. The intimacy was breathtaking. They might have been lovers, curling up together in bed at night, the sheets damp and smel y...