Scaredy Cat (6 page)

Thorne scanned the TV pages of the Standard. Tuesday night and bugger al on. Even worse, Sky had shown the Spurs-Bradford game at eight o'clock. He'd forgotten al about it. At home against Bradford - should be three points in the bag. Teletext, the footbal fan's best friend, gave him the bad news.

She was slumped, her back against his legs, buttocks pressing down on her heels and knuckles lying against the polished wooden floorboards. He stood behind her, both hands on the back of her neck, readying himself. He glanced around the room. Everything was in place. The equipment laid out within easy .reach.

Her mouth fel open and a wet gurgling noise came out. He tightened his grip, ever so slightly, on her neck. There was real y no point in trying to talk and, besides, he'd heard quite enough from her already.

An hour and a half earlier, he'd watched as the group of girls had begun to thin out. A couple had wandered off towards the tube and a couple more to the bus stop. One SLEEPYHEAD 51

tottered off down the Hol oway Road. Local, he guessed. Perhaps she'd like to join him for a drink.

He'd taken a left turn and driven the car round the block, emerging on to the main road twenty yards or so ahead of her: He'd waited at the junction until she was a few feet away then got out of the car.

'Excuse me... sorry.., but I seem to be horribly lost.' Slurring the words ever so slightly. Just the right side of pissed. And so wel -spoken.

'Where are you trying to get to?'

Wary. Quite right too. But nothing to worry about here. Just a tipsy hooray lost on the wrong side of the Archway roundabout. Taking off his glasses, looking like he's having trouble focusing...

'ttampstead... sorry.., had a bit too much... Shouldn't be driving, tel you the truth.'

'That's OK, mate. Hammered meself as it goes...' 'Been clubbing?'

'No, just in the pub - mate's birthday.., real y bril iant.'

Good. He was glad she was happy. Al the more to want to live for. So...

'I don't suppose you fancy a nightcap?' Reaching

through the car window and producing it with a flourish. 'Blimey, what are you celebrating?'

Christ, what was it with these gifts and a bottle of fizz? Like a hypnotist's gold watch.

Just pinched it from a party.' Then the giggle. 'One for the road?'

About half an hour. Thirty minutes of meaningless semi-literate yammering until she'd started to go. She was ful of herself. Nita's boyfriend... Linzi's problems at work.., a couple of dirty jokes. He'd smiled and nodded

52 MARK BILLINGHAM

and laughed, and tried to imagine how he could possibly have been less interested. Then the nodding-dog head and the sitcom slurring, and it was time for the innocuouslooking man to tip his paralytic girlfriend into the back of his car and take her back to his place.

Then he'd made the phone cal , and put her in position. And now Helen wasn't quite so gobby.

Again the gurgling, from somewhere deep down and desperate.

'Ssh, Helen, just relax. It won't take long.'

He positioned his thumbs, one at either side of the bony bump at the base of the skul and felt for the muscle, talking her through it... 'Feel these two pieces of muscle, Helen?'

She groaned.

'The sternocleidomastoid. I know, stupidly long word, don't worry. These muscles reach al the way down to your col ar-bone. Now what I'm after is underneath...' He gasped as he found it. 'There.'

Slowly he wrapped his fingers, one at a time around the carotid artery and began to press.

He closed his eyes and mental y counted off the seconds. Two minutes would do it. He felt something like a shudder run through her body and up through the thin surgical gloves into his fingers. He nodded respectful y, admiring the Herculean effortthat even so tiny a movement must have taken.

He began to think about her body and about how he might have touched it. She was his to do with as he pleased. He could have slipped his hands from her head and slid them straight down the front of her and beneath her shirt in a second. He could turn her round and penetrate her

SLEEPYHEAD 53

mouth, pushing himself across her teeth. But he wouldn't. He'd thought about it with the others too, but this was not about sex.

After considering such things at length he'd decided that his was a normal and healthy impulse. Wouldn't any man feel the same things with a woman at his mercy? So easily available?

Of course. But it was not a good idea. He did not want them.., classifying this as a sex crime.

That would be easy, would throw them too far off the scent. And he knew al about DNA.

A growl came from somewhere deep in Helen's throat. She could feel everyxhing, was aware of everything and stil she fought it.

'Not long now... Please be quiet.'

He became aware of a drumming noise and, without moving his head, glanced down to where her fingers were beating spastical y against the floorboards. Adrenaline staging a hopeless rearguard action against the drug. She might make it, he thought, she wants to live so much.

One minute forty-five seconds. His fingers locked in position, he leaned down, his lips on her ear, whispering:

'Night-night, Sleepyhead...'

She stopped breathing.

Now was the critical time. His movements needed to be swift and precise. He eased the pressure on the artery and pushed her head roughly Ibrvard until chin was touching chest. He let it rest there for a few seconds before whipping it back the same way so that he was staring down at her face. Her eyes were open, her jaw slack, spittle running down her chin. He dismissed the urge to kiss her and moved her head back into the central position. Back into neutral. Then he took a firm grip and entwined his fingers in her long brown 54 MARK BILLINGHAM

hair before twisting the head back over the left shoulder. And holding it.

Then the right shoulder. Each twist splitting the inside of the vertebral artery. Now it was up to her.

He laid her down gently and placed her body in the recovery position. He was sweating heavily. He reached for a glass of cold water and sat down on the chair to watch her. To wait for her to breathe.

His mind was empty, as he focused, unblinking, on her face and chest. The breaths would be short and shal ow, and he watched and wil ed the smal est movement. Every few seconds he leaned forward and felt for a pulse. Helen's body was unmoving.

He reached for the bag and mask. It was time to intervene. Ten minutes of frantic squeezing, shouting at her: 'Come on, Helen, help me!' Screaming into her face. 'I need you to be strong.'

She wasn't strong enough.

He slumped back into the chair, out of breath. He looked down at the lifeless body. A button was missing from her shirt. He looked across at the plain black shoes, neatly placed one next to the other by her side. The smal pile of jewel ery in a stainless-steel dish next to them.

Cheap bracelets and big, ugly earrings.

He mourned her and hated her.

He needed to move. Now it was just about disposal. Quick and easy.

He began to strip her.

Thorne picked up the bottle of red wine from the side of his chair and poured another glass. Maybe forty-year-old men were better off on their own in neat, comfortable but SLEEPYHEAD 55

smal flats. Forty-year-old men with bad habits, more mood swings than Glenn Mil er and twenty-odd years off the market had very little say in the matter. A taste for country-and-western hardly helped.

Johnny was singing about memories. Thorne made a mental note to programme the CD player to skip this track next time. Had Frank been right when he'd asked if the Calvert case was stil part of the equation?

The one fresh and tender corpse...

Fifteen years was too long to be lugging this baggage around. It wasn't his anyway. Fie couldn't recal how it had " been passed on to him. He'd only been twenty-five. Those far above him had carried the can, as it was their job so to do. He'd never had the chance to take the honourable way

out. Would he have done it anyway?

One man, released...

He'd had no say in letting Calvert go after the interview. The fourth interview. What happened in that corridor and later, in that house, seemed like things he'd read about like everybody else. Had he real y felt that Calvert was the one? Or was that a detail his imagination had pencil ed in later, in the light of what he had seen that Monday morning? Once everything started to come out,

his part in it al was largely forgotten anyway.

Four girls, deceased...

Besides, what was his trauma - God, what a stupid word - compared with the family of those little girls who should stil have been walking around? Who should have had their own kids by now.

Memories are made of this.

He pointed the remote and turned off the song. The phone was ringing.

56 MARK BILLINGHAM

'Tom Thorne.'

'It's Hol and, sir. We think we've got another body.' 'You think?'

His stomach lurching. Calvert smiling as he walked out of the interview room. Alison staring into space. Dead Susan, dead Christine, dead Madeleine, crossing their fingers.

'Looks the same, sir. I don't think they'd even have

passed this one on to us but she hasn't got a mark on her.' 'What's the address?'

'That's the thing, sir. The body's outside. The woods behind Highgate station.'

Minutes away, this time of night. He downed the rest of the glass in one. 'You'd better send a car, Hol and. I've had a drink.'

'Best of al , sir...'

'Best?'

'We've got a witness. Somebody saw him dump the body.'

I could sense that Tim real y wanted to know who the flowers were from. He didn't say anything, but I know he was looking at them. He didn't ask me. Maybe that's because it was a question he actual y wanted an answer to, and not just a pointless conversation with his ex-girlfriend who's now a retarded mong.

Sorry, Tim. But nothing can prepare you for this, can it? I mean, you go through al the usual stuff,, holidays together, meeting each other's friends. He never had to deal with meeting the parents, jammy sod. His were a nightmare! But this was never part of the deal, was it? "How would you cope if I was on a liJb-support machine and completely unable to move or communicate?" never real y comes up in those early intimate little chats, does it?

Oh, and I've got an air mattress now, to stop me getting bed sores apparently. It's probably hugely comfy. Makes a racket, though. Low and electrical. Sometimes I wake up and lie in the dark thinking that somebody's doing a bit of late-night vacuuming in the next room.

Anne's got the hots forthat copper, I reckon. He does seem nice, I grant you. Nicer than her ex anyway, who sounds like a tit. The copper's funny, though. I was pissing myself when he apologised for being a bit whiffy. I heard Tim asking one of the nurses about the flowers. There was no card and the nurse went away to ask one of her mates. Now I think T#n suspects I'm having an affair with a policeman. Obviously, he must be a fairly strange policeman with a taste for cheap yel ow nighties and extremely compliant girlfriends who never answer back.

58 MARK BILLINGHAM

What's that old joke about the perfect woman? If I was a nymphomaniac and my dad owned a brewery, he'd be quids in...

FOUR

The Sierra pul ed up behind the operations van. As soon as Thorne stepped out of the car he could see that things were going to be difficult. Even at two o'clock in the morning it was stil muggy but there was rain coming. Valuable evidence would be lost as the scene turned quickly to mud. The various photographers, scene-of-crime-officers and members of the forensic team were going about their business with quiet efficiency. They knew they didn't have very long. Anything useful was usual y found in the first hour. The golden hour. Tughan would stil have everything covered anyway: he'd have rung for a weather forecast. This was their first sniff of a crime scene, and nobody was taking any chances.

Thorne set off down the steep flight of steps that led to Highgate tube station and gave access to Queens Wood the patch of woodland bordering the Archway Road. As he walked he could see the glare of the arc lights through the trees. He could see the figures of forensic scientists in white plastic bodysuits, crouched over what he presumed was the body, in search of stray fibres or hairs from the girl's clothing. He could hear instructions being barked out, the hiss of camera flashes recharging and the constant drone of the portable generator. He'd been at many such scenes in

60 MARK BILLINGHAM

the past, far too many, but this was like watching the A team work. There was a determination about the entire process that he'd seen only once before. There was a distinct absence of whistling in the dark. There was no gal ows humour. There wasn't a flask of tea to be seen anywhere.

It was only when he ducked under the handrail and began to pul on the plastic overshoes provided by a passing SOCO that Thorne realised just how difficult a crime scene this would be to examine. He also saw at once how cal ous the kil er had been in his choice of dumping ground. The body lay hard against the high metal railings that bordered the pavement al the way down the hil . On one side lay the main road and on the other, some hundred feet of dense woodland on a steep hil leading down to the underground station at Highgate. The only access to the body was up the hil and through the trees. Though a wel trodden path had already emerged, it was stil a slow process negotiating the route to the body. The ground was hard and dry but it would take only ten minutes of rain to turn it into a mud chute. By the time they'd got the scene protected with polythene tents it would hardly have been worth the effort.

He hoped they got what they needed quickly. He hoped there was something to get.

Dave Hol and came jogging down the slope towards him. He was backlit beautiful y by the arc lights. Thorne could quite clearly make out the silhouette of a notebook being brandished.

He doesn't look like a policeman, thought Thorne, he looks like a prefect. Even with a hint of stubble, his tidy blond hair and ruddy complexion made him the obvious target for comments of the aren't-policemenlookingyoungerthese-days variety. Pensioners