Scaredy Cat (7 page)

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adored him. Thorne wasn't sure. Hol and's father had been in the force and, in Thorne's experience, that was rarely without problems. He doesn't even move like a copper, he thought.

Coppers don't skip down hil s like mountain

goats. Coppers move like.., ambulances.

'Cup of tea, sir?'

OK, perhaps he'd been a bit naive. There was always tea. 'No. Tel me about this witness.' 'Right, don't get too excited.'

Thorne's heart sank. It was obviously not going to be earth shattering.

'We've got a vague physical description, not a lot.' 'How vague?'

'Height, build, a dark car. The witness, George Hammond...'

That fucking notebook again. He wanted to ram it up the cocky little gobshite's arse.

'... was at the top of the path a hundred yards further up the main road. He thought the bloke was chucking a bag of rubbish over.'

That was what Thorne had already worked out. He must have pul ed up and heaved the body over the railings.

She might just as wel have been a bag of rubbish.

'And that's it? Heighl and build?'

'There's a bit more on the car. He says he thinks it was a nice one. Expensive.'

Thorne nodded slowly. Witnesses. Another thing he'd had to become resigned to. Even the more perceptive ones gave conflicting accounts of the same event.

'Mr Hammond's eyesight isn't bril iant, sir. He's an old man. He was only out walking his dog. We've got him in the car.'

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'Hang about, those railings are six feet high. How big

did he say he was?'

'Six two, six three. She's not a big girl, sir.'

Thorne squinted into the lights. 'Right, I'l have a word

with the optical y chal enged Mr Hammond in a minute.

Let's get this over with.'

Phil Hendricks was crouched over the body, his ponytail secured beneath his distinctive yel ow showercap. The sci .... entists had finished their scraping and taping, and Hendricks was taking his turn. Thorne watched the al -too familiar routine as the pathologist took temperature readings and conducted what, until the body was removed, would be a cursory examination. Every minute or so he would heave himself on to his haunches with a grunt, and mumble into his smal tape-recorder. As always, each tedious detail of the entire procedure was being immortalised on film by the police cameraman. Thorne always wondered about those characters. Some of them seemed to fancy themselves as film-makers - he'd actual y had to bol lock one once for shouting, 'That's a wrap.' Some had a disturbing glint in their eye that said, 'You ought to come round to my place and have a look at some of the footage I'l be showing the lads at Christmas.' He couldn't help wondering if they were al waiting to be headhunted by some avaricious TV company eager for more mindless docusoaps. Maybe he was being too harsh. He was too harsh about Hol and as wel . Perhaps it was just the perfectly pressed chinos and loafers he didn't like. Maybe it was just that Hol and was a young DC

eager to please.

Hadn't he been like that? Fifteen years ago. Heading for a fal .

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Hendricks began to pack away his gear and looked up at Thorne. It was a look that had passed between them on many occasions. To the untrained eye this 'handing over of responsibility' might have seemed as casual as two poolplayers exchanging a cue. Pathologists were supposed to be colder than any of them but despite the Mancunian's flippant, nasal tones and dark sense of humour, Thorne knew what Hendricks was feeling. He'd watched him crying into his pint often enough. Thorne had never reciprocated.

'He's getting a tad fucking casual, if you ask me.' Hendricks began fiddling with one of his many earrings. Eight the last time Thorne had counted. The thick glasses gave him an air of studiousness but the earrings, not to mention the discreet but famous tattoos and the penchant for extravagant headgear, marked him out as unconventional to say the least. Thorne had known the gregarious goth pathologist for five years. He was ten years his junior

and horribly efficient; Thorne liked him enormously.

'I didn't, but thanks for the observation.'

'No wonder you're touchy, mate. Two-one at home to Bradford?'

'Robbed.'

'Course you were.'

Thorne's neck was stil horribly stiff. He dropped his head back and gazed up into a. clear night sky. He could make out the Plough. He always looked for it: it was the only constel ation he knew by sight. 'So, it's him, then, is it?'

'I'l know for sure by the morning. I think so. But what's she doing here? That's a hel of a busy road. He might easily have been seen.'

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'He was. By Mr Magoo, unfortunately. Anyway, I don't think he was here very long. He just stopped and chucked her out.'

Hendricks moved aside and Thorne looked down at the woman who in a few hours would be identified as Helen Theresa Doyle. She was just a girl. Eighteen, nineteen. Her blouse was pul ed up, revealing a pierced bel ybutton. She was wearing large hoop earrings. Her skirt was torn, revealing a nasty gash at the top of her leg.

Hendricks clicked his bag shut. 'I think the wound's from where she got caught on the railings as the bastard hoicked her over the top.'

Something caught Thorne's eye and he glanced to

his right. Standing twenty or so feet away, staring straight at him, was a smal fox. A vixen, he guessed. She stood completely stil , watching the strange activity. They were on her territory. Thorne felt a peculiar pang of shame. He'd heard farmers and pro-hunt lobbyists ranting about the savagery of these animals when they kil ed, but he doubted that a creature kil ing to feed itself and its young could enjoy it. Bloodlust fed off a particular kind of intel igence. There was a shout from the top of the hil and the fox prepared to bolt but relaxed again.

Thorne could not take his eyes from the animal as it stared into the artificial y lit reality of a warped kind of human bloodlust. Of a genuine brutality. Half a minute passed before the fox sniffed the ground, its curiosity satisfied, and trotted away.

Thorne glanced at Hendricks. He'd been watching too.

Thorne took a deep breath and turned back to the gift. Conflicting emotions.

He felt revulsion at the sight of the body, anger at the

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waste. Sympathy for the relatives, and terror at the thought

of having to confront them, their rage and grief.

But he also felt the buzz.

The rush of the crime scene. The first crime scene. The thing that might smash the investigation wide open might be under their noses, waiting, asking to be found. If it was there, he'd find it. Her body...

There were leaves in her long brown hair. Her eyes were open. Thorne could see that she had a nice figure. He tried to get the thought out of his mind.

'He's always taken a bit of time before, a'n't he?' mused Hendricks. 'Nice and easy. Taken the trouble to lay them down like they'd stroked out watching tel y or cooking dinner. He didn't real y seem to care this time. Bit of a rush job .'

Thorne looked at him, asking the question.

'An hour or two at the most. She's not even cold yet.' Thorne bent down and took the girl's hand. Hendricks pul ed off his showercap then snapped off his rubber gloves, releasing a smal puff of talcum powder. As Thorne leaned forward to close the girl's eyes, the hum of the generator fil ed his head. Hendricks's voice seemed to be coming from a long wayaway.

'I can stil smel the carbolic.'

Anne Coburn sat in the dark room atthe end of a horrible day that by rights should have ended three hours earlier. The papers were forever banging on about the intolerable hours worked by junior doctors but senior ones didn't exactly have it easy. A meeting with the administrator that should have taken an hour, and lasted three, had given her 66 MARK BILLINGHAM

a headache that was only just starting to abate. It had raged through two lectures, a consultation round, an argument with the registrar and a mountain of paperwork. And David was stil on the warpath...

She sat back in the chair and massaged her temples. Christ, these chairs were uncomfortable. Had they been designed that way deliberately to encourage visitors to deposit their fruit and bugger off?.

Maybe if David had stil been at home she'd have left the paperwork, but not any more. The house would be quiet. Rachel would be tucked up in bed by now, watching some emaciated drug casualty with too much eyeliner prancing about on MTV.

She thought about her daughter for a while.

They hadn't been getting on very wel recently. The GCSEs had put them both under a lot of strain. Rachel was just letting off steam, that was al , having slogged her guts out. Anne had decided to buy her a present when she got her results, to say wel done for working so hard. A new computer, maybe. She thought about getting it now instead.

And then she thought about Tom Thorne.

She looked at the flowers he'd brought with him and smiled as she remembered his apology to Alison for... what was the word he'd used? Humming. She'd thought he'd smelt good. She thought he smelt honest. He wasn't a hard man to find attractive. She probably had a few years on him, but knew instinctively that he wasn't the type that would be bothered by that. He was chunky. No... solid. He looked like he'd been round the block a few times. He was the sort of man to whom she'd found herself drawn since things had begun to fizzle out with SLEEPYHEAD 67

David - many years ago, if she was being honest with herself.

It was odd that there was more grey in Thorne's hair on the left-hand side. She'd always liked brown eyes as wel .

Anne was suddenly aware that she was voicing her thoughts. These late-night conversations with Alison were becoming routine. Nurses were used to discovering her wittering away in the middle of the night. She had begun to look forward to talking to Alison, Engaging with Alison's brain was vital as part of her treatment but Anne found it therapeutic too. It was strange and exciting to be able to speak your mind and not be... judged. It was confession without the spooky stuff. Perhaps somewhere Alison was judging her. She was probably ful of opinions - 'Sod the crusty copper! Find yourself a tasty young medical student!'

One day Anne would find out exactly what Alison had been thinking. Right now, the hum of the machinery was making her sleepy. She stood up, reached across and gently squeezed the lubrication drops into Alison's eyes before taping them shut for the night. She took off her jacket, scrunched it up and put it beneath her head as she sat down again. She closed her eyes, whispered goodnight to Alison and was immediately asleep.

By seven thirty the next morning the body had been forreal y identified. Helen Doyle's parents had rung to report that she hadn't come home at about the same time as George Hammond was watching her tumble over the railings into Queens Wood. Within hours of that first concerned phone cal , Thorne was leaning against a wal , watching them walk slowly down the corridor, away from

68 MARK BILLINGHAM

the mortuary. Michael Doyle sobbed. His wife, Eileen, stared grimly into the distance and squeezed her husband's arm. Her high heels click-clacked al the way down the stone steps as they walked outside, to be greeted by the dazzling, crisp and completely ordinary dawn of their first day without a daughter.

Now Thorne stood with his back to a different wal . Dead Helen had taken her place alongside the others. She hadn't spoken up yet but it was only a matter of time. Now, forty or so officers of assorted rank, together with auxiliaries and civilian staff, sat waiting for Thorne to speak to them. As ever, he felt like the badly dressed deputy headmaster of a run-down comprehensive. His audience exchanged bored pleasantries or swapped laddish insults. The few women on the team sat together, deflecting the casual sexism of col eagues for whom

'harass' was stil two words. The wisps of smoke from a dozen or more cigarettes curled up towards the strip-lights. Thorne might as wel have been back on twenty a day.

'The body of Helen Doyle was discovered this morning in Queens Wood in Highgate at just after one thirty a.m. She was last seen leaving the Marlborough Arms on Hol oway Road at eleven fifteen. The post-mortem is being carried out this morning but for now we're working on the assumption that she was kil ed by the same man responsible for the deaths of Christine Owen, Madeleine Vickery and Susan Carlish...'

The dead girls: 'Oh, come on, Tommy. You know it was him: '... as wel as the attempted murder of Alison Wil etts.' But it wasn't attempted murder, was it? The kil er was actual y attempting to do something else. Thorne didn't

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know the word for it. They'd probably have to invent one if they ever caught him. He cleared his throat and ploughed on.

'George Hammond, who discovered the body, has given us a vague description of a man seen removing the body from his car and dumping it at the scene. Six feet one or two, medium build. Dark hair possibly. Glasses maybe. The car is a blue or possibly a black saloon, no make or model as yet. The victim was abducted at some point on her journey from the pub to her home on Windsor Road, which is no more than half a mile away, sometime between eleven fifteen and eleven thirty. Nobody's reported seeing anything but somebody did. I'd like them found, please. Let's get a make on that car and a decent description...'

Thorne paused. He could see one or two officers exchanging glances. It had taken him less than a minute to impart the essential information, the paltry scraps of fact that were supposed to shift the operation up a gear.

Frank Keable stood up. 'I don't real y need to tel you, but the usual press blackout, please.' The media hadn't got hold of the kil ings, not as the work of one man at any rate. The fact that the murders hadn't been concentrated in one area and had been so wel disguised had made it hard for them. It had taken the police long enough to put it together themselves. Stil , Thorne was surprised: Backhand had been up and running for weeks now and they usual y had sources within most high-level operations. In time there would be a leak and then the usual buck-passing would begin. The tabloids would come up with a lurid nickname for the kil er, publicity-hungry politicians would bleat about law and order, and Keable would give him a speech about 'pressure being brought to bear'. But so far so good.