Scaredy Cat by Mark Billingham
Authors: Mark Billingham
Tags: Fiction, General, Psychological, Thrillers, Mystery & Detective, Police, England, Serial Murders
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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
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
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