Mark Billingham: Lazybones

She liked this time of year. The few precious weeks of summer, when she wasn't forced to choose between working in scarf and gloves or punishing her stock with central heating. She liked closing up when it was still light. It made the early starts less painful, gave that couple of hours between the end of the day and the start of the evening a scent of excitement, a tang of real possibility. She closed the door behind her and climbed the stripped wooden stairs up to the flat Denise had wielded the sander and done the whole place in a weekend, while Eve had taken responsibility for the decorating. Most domestic chores got split fairly equally between them, and though there wire the sulks, the occasional frosty silences that followed a pilfered yoghurt or a dress borrowed without asking, the two of them got on pretty well. Eve knew that Denise could be quite controlling, but then she also knew there were occasions when she herself needed to be controlled. She tended to be more than a little disorganised and though Den could be Mother Hen-ish at times, it was nice to feel looked after. The endless list-making could get wearing but there was always food in the fridge and they never ran out of toilet roll!

She dropped her bag on the kitchen table and flicked on the kettle.

'Oi, Hollin, you old slapper, you want tea?' Almost before she'd finished shouting she remembered that Denise was going straight out from work, meeting Ben in the pub next to her office. Denise had called the shop at lunchtime, told her she wouldn't be home for dinner, asked her if she fancied joining them.

Eve walked through to her bedroom to put on a fresh T-shirt while she was waiting for the kettle to boil. No, she'd stay in, veg out in front of the TV with a bottle of very cold white wine. She couldn't be bothered to change and go out. It was sticky outside and uncomfortable. She'd feel dirty by the time she got there. The pub would be loud and smoky and she'd only feel like a gooseberry anyway. Denise and Ben were very touchy-feely…

She stared at herself in the mirror on the back of her bedroom door, striking a pose in bra and pants. She saw herself smiling as she thought again about the policeman who had answered the phone a week before. Impossible to picture from just the voice of course, but she'd tried anyway and was pretty keen on what she'd come up with. She was fairly sure that, crime scene or no crime scene, he'd been flirting with her on the phone, and she knew full well that she'd been flirting right back. Or had she been the one to start it?

She pulled on a white, FCUK T-shirt and went back into the kitchen to make her tea.

They'd sent a car round the day after she'd called, to collect the cassette from her answering machine. She told the two officers that she'd have been more than happy to bring it into the station, but, understandably, they seemed eager to take it with them.

Walking around the flat opening windows, she debated whether a week was quite long enough. She couldn't decide whether she should just turn up, or if it might be better to call. The last thing she wanted was to look pushy. She had every right of course, being involved, to see what was going on. It was only natural that she should be a bit curious after the business with the phone call, wasn't it? Surely, going along to enquire if there had been any progress in the case was no more than any other concerned citizen would do.

She suddenly realised that, wandering around the flat, she'd put her tea down and couldn't remember where. Sod it, the kitchen was close and she knew exactly where the fridge was. Opening the wine, she wondered if Detective Inspector Thorne was one of those funny blokes that got put off by women who appeared a bit keen. Maybe she'd leave it another day or two.

The evening was ridiculously warm. Elvis, Thorne's emotionally disturbed cat, looked uncomfortable following him from room to room, yowling like she was asking to be shaved. Thorne got sweaty cooking and eating cheese on toast wearing an open Hawaiian shirt and a pair of shorts he bought during a short-lived dalliance with a nearby gym. Thorne lay on the sofa and watched a film. He turned the sound on the TV. down and looked at the pictures with the radio on. He flicked through the music section in the previous week's edition of Timeout, trying to find the band with the most ridiculous name. Finally, just before midnight, his empties cleared away and nothing else to do which might put it off any longer, he reached for the phone.

It didn't matter that it was late. His father's body clock was only one of the systems that had broken down. In some ways, the Alzheimer's diagnosis had come as something as a relief. The eccentricities were now called symptoms, and for Thorne the vagaries of old age becoming certainties, however unpleasant, had at least provided a focus. Things had to be done, simple as that. Thorne still got irritated with the terrible jokes and pointless trivia, but the guilt didn't last as long as it had before. Now he just got on with it and the shape of the guilt had changed, hammered into something he could recognize as anger at an illness which took father and son and forced them to swap places. There was a financial burden now that wasn't always easy to meet, but he was getting used to it.

Jim Thorne was, at least physically, in pretty good nick for 71, but still, a carer had to visit daily and there was no way an old age pension was going to cover it. His younger sister Eileen, to whom he had never been close, traveled up from Brighton once a week, taking care to keep Thorne well informed of his dad's condition. Thorne was grateful though it seemed like a terribly British thing to him, families coming good when it was practically too late.

'Dad.'

'Oh, thank Christ, this is driving me mad! Who was the first Dr. Who? C'mon, this is doin' my head in.'

'Was it Patrick somebody? Dark hair.'

'Trenton was the second one, the one before Pertwee. Oh shit and belly confusion, I thought you might know.'

'Look in the book…I..I bought you that TV encyclopedia.'

'Fucking Eileen's tidied the bugger away somewhere. Who else might know?'

Thorne started to relax. His father was fine.

'Dad, we need to start thinking about this wedding.'

'What wedding?'

'Trevor, Eileen's son, your nephew.'

His dad took a deep breath and he breathed out again. The rattle in his chest sounded like a low growl.

'He's an arsehole. He was an arsehole when he got married the first time. Don't see why I have to go and watch the arsehole get married again.'

The language was unimaginative, but Thorne had to admit that his father had a point.

'You told Eileen you were going.'

There was a heavy sigh, a phlegmy cough, and then silence. After a few seconds, Thorne began to think his father had put the phone down and wandered away.

'Dad?'

'It's ages. It's ages away isn't it?'

'It's a week on Saturday. Come on, Eileen must have talked to you about it, she talks to me about sod all else.'

'Do I have to wear a suit?'

'Wear your navy one. It's light and I think it's going to be warm.'

'That's wool, the navy one. I'll bloody roast in the navy.'

Thorne took a deep breath, thinking, Please your bloody self. 'Listen, I'm going to come and pick you up on the day and we're stopping the night down there…'

'I'm not going down there in that bloody death-trap you drive…'

'I'll hire a car, all right? It'll be a laugh, we'll have a good time. OK?'

Thorne could hear a clinking, the sound of something metallic being fiddled with. His dad had taken to buying cheap, second-hand radios, disassembling them and throwing the pieces away.

'Dad? Is that OK? We can talk about the details closer to the day if you want.'

'Tom?'

'Yeah?'

To Thorne, the silence that followed seemed like the sound of thoughts getting lost. Slipping down cracks, just beyond reach and then gone, flailing as they tumbled into darkness. Finally, there was an engagement, like a piece of film catching, regaining its proper speed. Holes locking on to ratchets.