Scaredy Cat (24 page)

There were blouses and slacks hanging on a washing-line.

228 MARK BILLINGHAM

The back door had been forced open. He knew he should unlock the gate and get back to the front of the house.

he should phone for backup.

He

knew

He knew the phone was staying in his pocket.

The rush was instant, and breathtaking. There was fear

too, pumping round his body, tightening his fists and loos erring his bowels. This was the fight-flight reflex at its most basic.

Fight or flight. It was never going to be any contest. Thorne felt his skin slipping off and fal ing to the ground like an old overcoat. He felt his nerve-endings vibrate, raw and bloody, his senses painful y heightened. The wind in the trees was a cacophony. A face in a faraway window, an oncoming juggernaut. He could taste the air. Tinfoil on a fil ing.

There was no theatrical creak as he pushed open the

door and tensed every muscle. He stepped into a smal kitchen. The surfaces were spotless, a tea-towel folded over a chair, washing-up stacked neatly on the draining-board. Thorne fought the impulse to reach for the breadknife and stood stil , trying to control his breathing. To his left was an open door that he could see led on to the living room. He moved soundlessly across the linoleum and scanned the room. It was empty. The brown carpet looked new but was presumably the first stage of improvements - the suite was saggy and threadbare. Thorne hurried across the room, took a deep breath and opened the door at the far end.

He was in a dimly lit hal just inside the front door. There were two more rooms opposite him. The one on the right nearest the front door had to be the bedroom; the other, he guessed, a toilet.

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It was worth a try. 'Mrs Byrne?'

Nothing.

From behind the second door he heard a smal , muffled

thud. The thumping in his chest was anything but. 'It always comes down to the final door, Tommy: ' Open it...'

'She'l come walking through the front door in a minute

and you'l feel like a right tit...'

Thorne opened the door.

He cried out, staggering backwards in sudden shock as something flev, hissing, out of the room and into his legs. He pushed himself off the wal and watched, his heart smashing against his chest as a cat careered into the living room. He heard the bang as it clattered through the catflap in the kitchen door.

Then he could smel it.

Cat skit and something else. Something more familiar and far more disgusting. Tangy and metal ic, and so strong he could have licked it out of the air. His tongue on a dying battery.

Resigned to the harder stuff...

Resigned to the inevitability of what he was going to see, Thorne stepped forward into the darkened room and reached for the light switch.

There were four more cats. One stared down at him from the top of the wardrobe while a second hopped lazily from a highly polished dressing-table. Two more were on the bed. Curled up across the body of Margaret Byrne.

She lay straight, down the edge of the left-hand side of the bed, her hands by her side, her head back and turned towards him. One eye was half open but not as wide as the 230 MARK BILLINGHAM

scarlet smile across her neck, the incision made gaping by

the angle of her head on the pil ow.

'Sweet Christ...'

The blood was pooled beneath her col ar-bone and had overflowed across her left side and on to the duvet, from where it stil dripped slowly on to the patterned blue carpet. One side of her pink blouse was sopping red. A foot or so from where Thorne was standing, frozen to the spot, there was another bloodstain, already sunk in and brown. Spatter patterns snaked away across the carpet, reaching as far as the wal on the opposite side of the bed. He could see straight away that this was where she'd been attacked, before being laid out on the bed to die, he guessed, a short time later. While her kil er watched.

Something glinting on the carpet near the end of the bed caught his eye. An earring, perhaps. He could see a necklace too, and rings, and a wooden jewel ery box on its side by the wal .

Margaret Byrne had tried to save the few things she had which were precious. But the man she had tried to save them from had not come to rob her.

Once again the nagging voice of procedure. He was contaminating a crime scene. He needed to get out.

He regretted not asking Hol and about her when he'd had the chance. Now he had to stand in a carpeted and perfumed slaughterhouse and piece it together. It wasn't hard to get a feeling for her. Of her. The cats and the neatly arranged bottles and jars on the dressing-table told him enough. He felt behind him for the solidity of the wal , leaned back against it and lowered himself slowly to the floor. The cat that had been sniffing around, a smal blackand-white one, ambled over and nuzzled his shins. Thorne SLEEPYHEAD 231

reached into his pocket for his phone and held it, dangling between his knees.

He wanted to stay with Margaret for a while before he made the cal .

When the cars arrived Thorne was sitting on the doorstep, staring at the woman in the window opposite. The cat, who would not leave him alone, was making itself comfortable on his lap. Hol and walked up and hovered. After a few moments Thorne looked up with a twisted smile. He had expected Tughan and was relieved not to see him. He couldn't see anybody he thought might be Brewer either. 'Been promoted, Hol and?'

Hol and said nothing. Remembering his conversation with Maggie Byrne on the same spot the day before, he was a word, a heartbeat from tears. Thorne watched the SOCOs steaming Hol and said nothing. Remembering his conversation with Maggie Byrne on the same spot the day before, he was a word, a heartbeat from tears. Thorne watched the SOCOs steaming up the passageway with their equipment. He had felt the same way as Hol and fifteen minutes earlier but now a strange calm had begun to settle over him.

'He executed her, Dave. He broke into her house and executed her.'

Hol and looked straight back at him and spoke evenly, his face showing nothing.

'He's been busy.'

I'm going to chuck Tim today. Does that sound a bit sudden? Sorry, I know it's out of the blue and maybe I should have built up to it a bit more, but I've been thinking about it for a good while.

Thinking about it.

Like I can do anything else. I'm hardly in a position to discuss boyfriend problems with my best mate, even if l was sure I stil had one. Wel , I could, but it would be the dul est girly gossip in history. Barley water and blackboards are no substitute for booze and fags and a home-delivery pizza.

And staring isn't laughing, is it?

But I have been thinking a lot about Tim and how unhappy he is. It's a real old line, I know, but it's for his sake rather than mine. Chucking him, I mean. I won't be trotting out shite like "I love you but I'm not in love with you or 'I think we should just be friends: To be honest, I'm not exactly sure what I wil say. I say "say'. Obviously I mean 'blink" and 'twitch'while the poor sod tries to keep the smile plastered to his face as he does his best to work out what the fuck I'm on about.

It's not as if I've got anything to go on, nothing I've ever seen in a film or on tel y. Tearful farewel s to terminal y il loved ones are ten a penny but this is pretty sbdding unique. Never seen this on EastEnders or Brookside. It's probably only a matter of time, of course. They'l drag it out over a couple of months. Milk it a bit. Probably be the big Christmas cliffhanger with the tragic, yet stil very sexy young woman in the hospital bed blinking like buggery while her hunky boyfriend kneels 236 MARK BILLINGHAM

by the side of the bed, sobbing his heart out and tel ing her that

he stil loves her no matter what.

Yeah, right...

So I don't real y know how I'm going to do it, but it's got to be done. I've only ever dumped one person. I was seventeen and he copped off with one of my mates at a party. Had his hand up her bra while I was in the queue for the toilet. Even so, the actual chucking was pretty tricky, and bear in mind, that was when I was vertical with a working gob.

The way I am now, it's shaping up to be a nightmare.

I know that in letting Tim off this very nasty hook, I'm probably coming across like some selfless, saintly figure, but the sad truth is that actual y I'm just being a right selfish cow. Because the fact is that he won't do it.

And I can't stand to see the pain in his eyes any more when he looks at me.

He doesn't know what to do, bless him. He talks, slowly. He talks and he uses the pointer like Anne showed him but I know he can't bear it. He's always been a bit of a girl about hospitals and blood and anything like that.

He said that he wished it had happened to him instead of me, and I know he means it. Before it sounds like this is me setting him free, or some cobblers like that, so he can go off and find someone else, I should say that if I ever get out of here and get myself sorted out, he'd better come running straight back, and I won't want to hear about what he's been up to and who with.

The truth is simple. He can't stand to see me hurt, and I feel the same way about him. And he looks utterly crushed al the time he's with me and it's my fault. I'm five feet fuck-al and I can't move a muscle and I'm squashing al the life out of him. So best to knock it on the head for now. Not the best choice of SLEEPYHEAD 237

words probably but that's not something I get a lot of say in these days.

He'S not going to like it. He'l cry most probably, big soft thing, or shout. Actual y that would be good, there's nothing like a bit of a scene to get the nurses going, but I think that when he goes home and thinks about it he'l be relieved. For Christ's sake, our dream ticket, our magic-island scenario, the best we can fucking hope for, involves wheelchairs and computers and one of us winning the lottery to pay for it al , and me about as much use as one of my two-year-olds and I wouldn't wish that on anybody.

Tim cares about me, I know he does. But I couldn't bear to be pitied. Loved is flne. But not pitied.

And "cares for'is not "cares about; is it?

So Tim, think yourself lucky, pet, and I apologise in advance if, at the crucial moment in your posh wedding to some drop-dead gorgeous blonde, when the vicar says that bit about yust cause or impediment", the door to the church crashes open and some spackhead in a wheelchair trundles in. Just ignore me and get on with it. I'l probably be pissed... Fuck me, did you hear what I said before? 'If I ever get out of here: FOURTEEN

The cat had sat and watched, content, unblinking, as a woman who loved her had been smashed across the back of the head and bled dry like a pig. Now she sat staring down at the face of a man who didn't understand any more than she had. Rising and fal ing with him as he breathed. Rising and fal ing and watching his eyes. They were dosed but she fol owed the movements of his eyebal s, darting back and forth behind the eyelids like tiny trapped animals. Looking for a way out. Searching for a weak spot. Heads bulging behind the eyes, threatening to burst through the paper-thin skin...

�.. and Maggie Byrne smiled and lay back on the bed. She kicked off her shoes and rubbed her feet together. He could hear the nylon of her tights crackling. He said something - a joke maybe. She threw back her head to laugh and the red line beneath her chin started to gape. She blushed and reached for a scarf and he told her that it didn't matter but she was already starting to cry. She shook her head and sobbed and tried to tie the scarf around her neck. The gash gaped wider until it looked like something on a fishmonger's slab. The not-so-slender neck, hacked into sections like tuna. Pink then a darker pink then red.

And his words would not comfort her. And he tried to

SLEEPYHEAD 239

take her in his arms but they slipped from around her neck. And his hands were stroking her col arbone and his fingers were exploring the damp and clammy interior of the wound.

Testing for freshness.

Maggie Byrne tried to scream but it came whistling from her neck.

He opened his eyes...

He hadn't been asleep and it wasn't a dream. Just a mental snapshot, twisted. A memory adjusted and warped by the unwelcome addition of an imagination. Something that lived in the ghoulish and morbid corner of his subconscious having its bit of fun.

He opened his eyes...

And waited for the images to blur and become distant. Lying on the sofa, hearing his heartbeat slow down. Feeling the beads of sweat on his face evaporate. Letting something creep back into its corner.

Until the next time.

He opened his eyes and stared back at the cat sitting on his chest.

'Fuck off, Elvis!'

The cat jumped off Thorne and slunk away.towards the bedroom. Maggie had beer] a big Elvis fan and had named the cat before it had been sexed. She'd always thought it was funny.

Sal y Byrne had taken a couple of her mother's cats back to Edinburgh with her, and the re'st had gone to the PDSA, but Elvis had been Thorne's from the moment he'd opened the door to Maggie's bedroom and breathed in the blood. The cat seemed drawn to him, Sal y had said. To need him, almost.

Almost as much as he needed her.

240 MARK BILLINGHAM

Just over two weeks now since he'd opened that bedroom door. Just over twenty-four hours since Margaret Byrne's funeral. Thorne didn't know about the arrangements for Leonie Holden. He was what he'd once heard Nick Tughan describe as 'out of the loop' on that one. Her funeral might wel already have happened. They'd found her a few hours before he'd found Maggie Byrne, and if Phil Hendricks had got the bits of her he needed, safely label ed in jars, then the body would have been released back to those for whom it stil meant something real. Something in their hearts and in their guts. Then they could say goodbye.

There would have been an official presence at her funeral, of course. It was often just some flowers but he could picture Tughan at the back of a church, in black like an assassin. He wondered if Frank Keable would have put in an appearance. Or somebody higher up. If the body count carried on rising they'd end up having to send the commissioner along. A thin smile and a wreath of white lilies spel ing out 'Sorry, doing our best'.