Scaredy Cat (26 page)

Alison was having problems with her boyfriend and things were coming to a head, yet Anne had spent the large part of their last session together bitching about her own problems.

Problems with her daughter. And her ex-husband. And her lover.

Things with Rachel were not getting any better. At least they were talking but they weren't saying anything. There was an element of walking on eggshel s on both their parts, the two of them wel aware that the smal est comment could blow up into a major row. It was the work she wasn't doing for the resits and the early nights she wasn't getting and the truth she almost certainly wasn't tel ing.

It was, Anne had begun to suspect - no, to be certain the boy she was seeing.

Anne had brought it UP once, casual y, but Rachel's reaction, tight-mouthed and defiant, had left her in no doubt that the subject was off limits. It was so stupid. Anne would have no problems with a boyfriend. Why should she? There had been boyfriends before. It was just the timing that was so bloody sil y. Important exams were only weeks away and Rachel was in danger of making a mess of everything and Anne couldn't do a thing about it.

Rachel was stubborn, like her father, and now he wasn't speaking to Anne either. Relations between her and David 250 MARK BILLINGHAM

had been distinctly frosty, bordering on downright venomous, for a while, but since she'd told him about Thorne, things had worsened rapidly. He'd seemingly broken off communication altogether, and at a time when a united front, as far as Rachel was concerned, would have been a nice idea.

What was so strange was that he'd seemed to know about the relationship with Thorne even before it happened. She thought back to the confrontation in the lift. He had been making comments about it even then. That was why she'd told him. She wasn't trying to score points wel , maybe just one or two - but his suspicion was already providing him with ample bile to spit in her direction, so why not simply congratulate him on his prescience? But since she'd confirmed her involvement.., was it an involvement?.., with Thorne, he'd turned real y nasty.

Steve Clark walked past and smiled, and she smiled back and wondered if part of this business with Rachel might not have something to do with Thorne as wel . Was Rachel jealous?

Anne had made an effort to talk to her about Thorne. Since the big flare-up a few weeks earlier she'd tried to be more open. She'd told Rachel about the case and about her connection with it. She'd left out some of the more grisly details and skirted around Jeremy's... involvement, as much for herown peace of mind as anything. She'd kept her up-to-date with Alison's progress and, in general, had made a real effort to build bridges. But perhaps she hadn't explained to Rachel how she felt about Thorne.

Anne pushed away the plate of untouched salad and decided that it was because she hadn't actual y worked it out herself.

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She stood up and moved quickly to the rear of the canteen and out through the swing doors to the fire escape, where she lit a cigarette and took in the view of large steel bins and heaps of polystyrene packaging.

Thorne...

He seemed fairly central to al her problematic relationships. Not least the one with Jeremy Bishop.

She'd barely spoken to Jeremy since the night she and Thorne had ended up in bed. This... cooling off had been her decision, but she sensed that he was keeping his distance as wel .

She couldn't deny the possibility that Jeremy was jealous, and that an element of that jealousy might be sexual, but she also suspected that he was becoming involved with somebody himself. He'd made one or two typical y oblique comments in the days before they'd stopped seeing each other. He'd seemed distracted and by something other than work. She hoped that it was a woman. She wished Jeremy happy as much as she wished anything.

She missed him.

But she wouldn't pick up the phone. She'd known this man for more than twenty-five years and despite the stupidity of Thorne's suspicions, to do so would have felt vaguely disloyal to the man she'd known for five minutes.

She resented having her loyalty tested. To anybody and by anybody. And why the hel -wasn't Thorne cal ing anyway?

He'd rung to tel her there had been some sort of serious development on the case. Serious, to her, had sounded like another word for 'death', and two days later she'd read al about it.

Then the other stuff. No mention of Alison, thank heavens, but plenty of gory grist to the media mil . The.

252 MARK BILLINGHAM

press blackout that Thorne had seemed so anxious about early on was wel and truly ended. Outraged leader columns and pictures of five dead women.

She'd stopped looking at the newspapers now. She was living with enough sickness already.

Anne didn't want any involvement in this hideous case bar the one she had already through Alison. She didn't want to know anything else.

U, ntil they caught him.

Thorne and Hol and had walked down to the pond next to the park's southernmost exit. They leaned against the railings and talked, occasional y needing to raise their voices above the shouts from the children's playground only a few feet away. A father smoked and read a paper, while two children tried unsuccessful y to clamber up a slide and a third stood on a swing, demanding to be looked at.

While Hol and stared out across the water, Thorne watched a large brown rat scuttling about in the dust beneath the low hedge that skirted the pond. There were always a few here, on the lookout for badly thrown bits of bread and Thorne was always excited to spot one. It wasn't a beautiful creature, but while Hol and's eye was taken by the variety of ducks and geese on display, Thorne's was natural y drawn to the rat. The scavenger, the chancer, the survivor. The vil ain.

This city could have no more perfect symbol.

'I hadn't got you pegged for a messenger boy, Hol and.'

Hol and could feel the redness rising up his neck as he turned to look at him. 'That's because I'm not, sir.'

Thorne instantly regretted his tone. It had been an attempt at dark humour but had just sounded sarcastic.

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Hol and was already past it. 'DCI Keable thought that we might run into each other, that's al . He had tried to phone you himself...'

Thorne nodded. Lots of people had tried to phone him. Letting Hol and convey this somewhat bizarre offer was a shrewd move. Frank Keable was not the most inspired or inspiring of officers, but he knew what was going on around him. He could read the troops. He always got a sense of the currents within an operation, which went way beyond who had the hump or who might fancy who.

The rat was standing on its hind legs now, sniffing at a litter-bin attached to the railings. Thorne looked across at Hol and. 'So, what do you think?'

Hol and smiled, part of him flattered at being asked but the greater part wel aware that his opinion would probably be worth less than nothing. 'I think it's a good offer, as a matter of fact.

Sounds to me like you'l be pretty much a free agent and as long as you don't get into too much trouble . . .'

'Or mention Jeremy Bishop?'

Hol and saw no point in sugaring the pil . 'It could be a lot worse.'

Thorne knew that he was right. Keable had hinted at disciplinary action after the discovery of Margaret Byrne's body, but with that and the Leonie Holden kil ing, castigating a rogue detective inspector with an overactive imagination had become something of a low priority. That's what Keable had said anyway. Either that or he'd had his own reasons for not wanting to make it official just yet and was giving himself time to think of exactly what best to do with Thorne. Either way, at the end of it al there was probably no more than a wrist-slapping in it.

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Hol and hadn't told him everything.

'They know about the fibres from Bishop's car boot.' 'Fuck.' Thorne kicked at the ground, the dust and grit sending the rat darting momentarily for cover. Somebody in Forensics with a very big mouth. That would explain the cal from Hendricks. He needed to talk to him.

'So I'm in a bit of bother, which, if I accept this offer

to become gome sort of consultant or whatever bol ocks title Frank Keable's come up with, might go away. Is that it?'

'He didn't exactly say that, sir.'

Consultant. He wondered what the catches were. Beyond the obvious one.

Leonie Holden was last seen on a night bus bound for Ealing and her body was discovered four hours later on wasteground in Tufnel Park.

Less than a quarter of a mile from Thorne's flat.

The significance of this latest message from the kil er to

his favourite detective inspector was not lost on anybody. Consultant? A better word might have been 'bait'. 'What do you think about Jeremy Bishop?'

Hol and phrased his answer careful y. 'I don't think he kil ed Margaret Byrne, sir.'

'He was supposed to have had a cast-iron alibi for Alison Wil etts as wel , and we found holes in it.'

'I stil don't understand any of it, though. I stil can't figure out how he could have done what he did to Alison and got her to the hospital in the time. Not to mention why. Why did he go to al that trouble just to give himself an alibi that didn't hold water?'

'I'l work it out, Hol and. And I'l work out how he kil ed Margaret Byrne as wel .'

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'He didn't, sir.'

'A man fitting his description was seen acting suspiciously outside her flat earlier in the day.'

'Coincidence. Got to be. Besides, that woman opposite is a nutter. She thought I was suspicious.' Hol and spoke calmly, no element of letting Thorne down gently, just stating the facts.

'I've been to the Royal London and spoken to everybody except the patients in deep comas. She was kil ed sometime mid- to late-afternoon, and Bishop was at the hospital, working through a routine theatre list. There's dozens of witnesses. Whitechapel to Tulse Hil and back without being missed is impossible.'

Thorne was grateful to Hol and for having made the effort. He'd almost certainly done it in his own time, and in the knowledge that if Tughan had found out he'd have been in deep shit.

'No alibi for Leonie Holden.' Thorne was thinking

aloud now.

'Sir...'

No alibi for Leonie Holden. Because he kil ed her. The .fucker kil ed her and dumped her on my doorstep.

'So you think I'm barking up the wrong tree as wel , then, Hol and? Or maybe that should just be barking?'

Hol and sighed. The questions just kept getting harder. 'I had been sort of coming round to the idea of Bishop as a prime suspect, sir. There's certainly nobody else in the frame, and even though it's al circumstantial I was wil ing to... go with it as an avenue of inquiry. But Maggie Byrne - her and Leonie Holden had to have been kil ed by the same man.'

They stood in silence. Thorne had nothing to say. Hol and had plenty, but thought most was better kept to

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himself. Behind them, a child tumbled from the roundabout and began to scream.

Hol and cleared his throat. 'Al the same, as a theory it does have one thing going for it, sir.'

'Yeah?' mumbled Thorne. 'What's that?'

'It's yours.'

Thorne couldn't look at him. He clenched his jaw. He was scared for a second or two that if he looked at Hol and his face would show far too much gratitude. It would be shining and desperate and pathetic.

The face that showed too much of everything.

He turned and began to walk towards the gate. His sudden movement caused the rat to bolt again with a smal squeal of alarm. The cheeky little bastard had been sitting on its haunches and cleaning its whiskers. They were so unafraid. Thorne had stood there before now and watched one scamper across his shoes.

He glanced over his shoulder. Hol and was half a dozen paces behind him.

Whatever journey was ahead, Thorne had no intention of slowing down but sensed that Hol and might be the sort of man, the sort of copper, who would close the gap and walk alongside him.

And perhaps, together, they would bring down Jeremy Bishop.

They reckoned that, in London, you were never more than six feet away from a rat. Thorne knew that you weren't a whole lot further from an altogether nastier breed of vermin.

More diseased. More human.

There is definitely no God. Or if there is, he, she or it is a right sick bastard. Like this isn't bad enough,t The way Anne explained it to me is like this.

They have to keep pul ing me about every ten bloody minutes so I don't get pressure sores, even on my lovely vibrating bed. So one of the nurses, don't know which one but my money's on Martina as revenge for the neck-coughing incident, accidental y dislodges the nasogastric feed, that's 'tube up nose' to you and me, as she's moving me. Just an inch or two, but that's al it takes. What happens then is that the feed, which is this tasteless white shire that's supposedly ful of proteins and other great stuff, instead of going where it's supposed to go, pours into my chest. Loads of it. Now, you and other people who can cough and splutter, just cough and splutter this crap back up and pul a face, and a few days later you might develop a mild chest infection.

Not me, though. Oh, no.

This feed is like nectar to fucking bacteria. They love it. They swarm al over it and, hey presto, I get bastard pneumonia. This sort of thing was bound to happen sooner or later. I'm prone to infection apparently. Wel , isn't that Just marvel ous?

So, here I am back on the ventilator. Big mechanical bel ows doing my breathing and l feel like I did when I'd just come in here.

Everything else stops now until I recover. Occupational therapy gets put on hold. The communication was going pretty wel , it has to be said. lb'd worked out a pretty good system 258 MARK BILLINGHAM

using an alphabet that's based on how many times a certain letter is likely to be used. So it doesn't go ,4, B, C, D, E. It's not an ,4-Z so much as an E-X. We've also got shortcuts forgoing back, for skipping forward, to repeat words, and ,4nne has become the human equivalent of that thing on my mobile phone that guesses what I'm going to say. She finishes words for me and most of the time she's spot on. She's just about got used to my swearing as wel .