Scaredy Cat (23 page)

She would put her fingers in her ears and scream. She had no choice.

She thought about Alison, so removed from everything. More than anything she wanted to bring her back. But with the fear and hate and mistrust that seemed to be so much part and parcel of everything, she couldn't help but wonder if Alison might be better off where she was.

She turned the radio on. There was nothing worth listening to, but she was nearly home anyway.

The bath was starting to get cold.

Thorne sat up and looked at his watch, which was lying

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next to his mobile phone on the toilet lid. Nearly one o'clock in the morning.

He'd been lying, completely stil , with his head under the water. His eyes were open and he stared up at the ceiling swimming above him, waiting for the water to stop moving around him and seeing how long he could hold his breath. It was a game he had played as a kid, lying in a steaming bath in that big old, echoey bathroom, pretending to be dead. He had stopped the night his grandmother came in, saw him, and took a bit of a turn. He'd sat bolt upright the second she

screamed, but he would never forget that look on her face. It was a look he'd seen many times since.

He'd usual y have a glass of wine in the bath, but tonight he had thought better of it. It wasn't that he was or the wagon. He'd clambered aboard that particular vehicle a couple of times and it was a very dul ride. He just didn't

think he should have a drink.

Not on a Tuesday night.

It felt, in so many ways, like the beginning of something. Since last night he'd thought about Jan a few times, but not in a maudlin or sentimental way. Being with Anne hadn't made him think about what he was missing. On the contrary, he realised final y that he hadn't been missing it. Missing Jan.

And it might be the beginning of the end of the sweat stained nightmare that was this case. He thought about Hol and and Hendricks out on a limb for him and hoped that what might happen the next day would save them the trouble. It could al be that easy, He wouldn't march back into Keable's office like Charlie Big Potatoes, ful of himself, but it would be close.

Thorne got out of the bath, towel ed himself off and threw on his dressing-gown. Ignoring the plastic

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Thresher's bag in the kitchen, he walked across to the stereo and stuck on Grievous Angel by Gram Parsons. Now, there was a man who couldn't say no to a drink. 'You can, though, Tommy.' 'Best not tonight, eh?' 'Please, not tonight...'

He lay down on the sofa, thoughts buzzing around in

his head like a swarm of fat black flies.

He wanted to ring Anne but thought she'd be in bed by now. His dad would stil be up. Or was Anne working late? He couldn't remember. Had James run home and told Daddy al about their little chat? Probably. Had Alison overheard the phone cal in her room? Hol and's girlfriend didn't like him, that was obvious. How the luck was he going to organise a box at White Hart Lane?

What would the eldest Calvert girl have been now? Twenty-four? Twenty-five?

The wine would fuzzy up his thinking a little for sure,

but it might at least slow things down. He stayed on the sofa and the wine stayed in the bottle. Tomorrow, who could say? There might be cause to celebrate.

Tonight Jeremy Bishop was on cal .

There was no way he was going to sleep without cal ing,

so he did. Bishop picked up almost immediately. As the smooth tones gave way quickly to impatience then anger, Thorne flicked the switch that terminated the cal , and lay there, relieved, holding the phone. The tension eased in an instant and an overwhelming tide of fatigue began to creep over him. He crossed his arms over the phone on his chest and closed his eyes.

He got into the car and sat for a moment, steadying

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himself. He'd had a tough day. Things had come up that needed dealing with and had almost upset his plans for the evening. It was going to be OK, though.

The courtesy light faded away and he began to relax, satisfied that he'd left everything ready at home, should he be lucky enough to bring a guest back. He placed the things he would need on the passenger seat. Al could be easily hidden in his pocket when the time came. He was sad that he'd had to dispense with the champagne, but she might have seen that stupid reconstruction. There was no need for it now anyway, but there had been something stylish about it. He'd never skimped: it had always been Taittinger. He'd believed in making their last taste a good one - their last taste in any conventional sense.

The conversations while he'd been waiting for the drug to kick in, though tedious in the main, had at least given him a sense of who he was treating. That was important. The thirty minutes with Alison had made him feel even better about the new life he'd given her. In that half an hour or so of drunken drivel, he'd come to understand the old life he'd be saving her from. From now on it was something of a lottery in that respect.

He smiled. It could be you!

He hoped that the police would be able to see past what were purely practical reasons for this change in his working methods. He didn't want time wasted on irrelevancies. Champagne last time, needle this time, it didn't real y matter. Thorne would understand. He might not be involved official y any longer, but that was neither here nor there.

He turned the ignition and switched on his headlights. He felt confident and capable. Once he was back at home 222 MARK B1LLINGHAM

and performing the procedure he would not consider the possibility of failure. With the others, it had only been when the light had final y died in their eyes that the word had even entered his head.

He took out his glasses and began to clean the lenses, setting his mind to the immediate task of preparing a new patient. There would need to be some force, unfortunately, as there had been with Thorne, but once he'd found the vein it would be over quickly. Then he just had to keep her quiet for a few minutes and there were ways of doing that. Something sharp would do it nicely. Once the drug began its work she would not be able to cry out anyway, so he shouldn't have too many problems.

The car pul ed away and he thought for a while about what he might do when it was al over. There were so many ways that it might end but he wondered how he might look back on what he was doing now. What he'd been forced to do. It would be strange, beginning again, but he would be able to remember certain things with fondness. There would always be Alison and however many other successes time al owed him. He could revel in that. And he would certainly remember and enjoy the symmetry of a punishment justly meted out. Such a fitting punishment. He grinned and began to hum the tune. Someone would certainly wish they'd never dragged him along to Gilbert and Sul ivan...

He pointed the Volvo towards the West End and leaned back in his seat, feeling as good as he had in a long time.

He'd accomplished so much with skil and rage.

Like I said, some days are a lot better than others...

This is the first joke I'm going to tel ,4nne.

There's this real y tasty and sexy young potato and she's walking home from the disco one night, after a top night out with her best friends the parsnip and the runner bean, when she's attacked by this mad carrot. The carrot does al sorts of horrible stuff to her and she winds up in hospital. Al her skin's been peeled off and she's been al mashed up and she's just lying there and the only thing that's undamaged are her eyes. The eyes of this potato. So the next day this potato's boyfriend, who's a tal , good-looking swede, comes to the hospital and talks to the doctor and, with tears in his eye, he says, "lYc'hat are her chances, Doc?" The doctor lools down at the poor, sad potato lying in the bed and says to him, 'I'm sorry.., but she's going to be a vegetable for the rest of her life:

THIRTEEN

Brigstocke had presumed it was a hangover. 'Sleep it off' was not the traditional response to somebody phoning in sick but Thorne couldn't real y argue. Brigstocke had worked with him before and it was a reasonable assumption. It wouldn't be too long before his patience gave out, though, and he went higher up. Thorne knew he didn't have much time. He didn't think he'd need much.

One look at the good weather had made up his mind. He decided to take the Thameslink overground from Kentish Town to Tulse Hil . It was direct, and an attractive alternative to sitting in the car for as long as it might otherwise take him to drive to Birmingham, or getting tense and sweaty on the underground. He'd never seen the attraction of the tube. For Thorne it inevitably meant the Northern line - interestingly the line of choice for most people who chose to jump in front of a tube train. He guessed that they were probably choosing to think of others in their own moment of deepest despair. If you're going to fuck up commuters, then why not fuck up those to whom chaos and delay are barely noticeable any more?

Thorne had decided long ago that, should he ever feel the need, he would be a handful-ofpil sbottleof-red

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wine-lieonthebedanddriftawaytoHankWil iams kind of bloke. Anything else was just showing off.

Though it had to be said, a gun in the mouth looked good on some people.

He looked out of the window as the train rumbled across the Blackfriars rail bridge. If it was a different world south of the river, it was one with its own dividing line. South-west was definitely the more gentrified, Clapham and Richmond and, of course, Battersea. There were nice areas of South-east London - he was fond of Greenwich and Blackheath - but, on the whole, that part of the city

1

! was as close as London got to a war-zone. Southeast...

Sarf-east London didn't need coppers, it needed United

Nations peacekeeperso At that very minute in Bermondsey

and New Cross there were characters propping up bars in

dodgy boozers that would have made Slobodan Milosevic

shit himself.

He opened his case and looked at the pictures again.

They looked like stil s captured in any undercover police

I operation. A career opportunity for Bethel should he ever

decide to hang up his dirty mac for good. Bishop was pho togenic, Thorne had known he would be, though when

the smile he wore in company was absent, the face was

considerably harder, severe even.

Thorne went through the pictures one by one. There

was the photo of James walking back towards the house

after the confrontation with Bethel . He was glancing back

over his shoulder, trying to look tough. He hadn't man

i aged it. Thorne wondered if he had a girlfriend. Probably

some horsy type cal ed Charlotte, who cal ed herself

Charlie, wore black and hung about in Camden Lock on a

Sunday afternoon popping pil s. He was looking for the

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best photo - the one in which Bishop was looking virtual y straight at the camera. Perhaps he'd heard Bethel moving about or caught a glimpse of bleached hair bobbing about in the bushes. The photo wasn't there and Thorne realised where he'd left it. The phone cal he'd taken in Alison's room had thrown him so completely that he'd al but forgotten why he was there in the first place. Maybe a nurse had found it and thrown it away. Unlikely. Anne had almost certainly come across it by now, which meant that he'd have some explaining to do. By then, of course, it would al have been worth it and she'd realise he'd been right. Who was he kidding? Right or wrong, the deceit involved would probably ensure that what had happened between them two nights earlier would turn out to have been a one-night stand.

The old man next to him had been pretending to be reading his newspaper but had been sneaking furtive looks at the photos on Thorne's lap at every opportunity. Maybe he thought Thorne was some kind of spy or sleazy paparazzo. Maybe he thought Thorne had kil ed his Princess. Either way he was becoming annoying. Thorne turned one of the photos round and held it up so that the old man could have a good look. He quickly glanced back down at his newspaper. Thorne leaned over and whispered conspiratorial y, 'It's al right, he's a doctor.'

The old man didn't look up from his paper for the rest of the journey.

Margaret Byrne's house was a five-minute walk from the station. He didn't know the area wel but it seemed amazingly calm and suburban, considering that Brixton was two minutes away. Thorne had been on the streets there in 1981. He had never felt so hated. He and many

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fel ow officers had comforted themselves with the thought that it was no more than police bashing. An excuse to torch some flash cars and nick a few TVs. Events since then had made him realise he'd been wrong. And Stephen Lawrence had changed everything.

Thorne rang the doorbel and waited. The curtains in the front bay windows were drawn. The bedroom, he guessed. He looked at his watch; he was ten minutes or so late. He rang the doorbel again. He looked around in the hope of seeing a woman hurrying up the road, hadng popped out to grab a pint of milk, but saw only a woman in the house opposite, eyeing him suspiciously. He eyed her back.

Thorne pressed himself against the window and peered through a smal crack in the green curtains but the room was dark. He turned to see the woman across the road stil staring at him. He began to feel uneasy.

'Calm down, Tommy. She's probably just nodded qff or something:

"Oh ffesus, not nor,.'

There was a smal passage on the right-hand side of the house al but blocked by a couple of black plastic dustbins. Thorne climbed over them and walked slowly down the passageway.

The high gate at the end was locked. He dropped his case over the gate and trudged back to grab one of the bins, having decided that the Neighbourhood Watch co-ordinator over the road would probably have caged the police by now anyway.

He tried to lower himself down as far as possible on the other side of the fence but the drop to the patio on the other side stil made his teeth rarde. The smal garden was neat and tidy.