Mark Billingham - Lazybones

Walking across to the foot of the stairs, stiff and slow as a Golem… Listening to it, watching it, feeling it all come apart. They'd given him the time off work, but the sick pay wasn't going to last for ever and she was contributing nothing and now the debts were growing as thick and fast as the suspicion. Mushrooming, like the doubts that sprouted in every damp, dark corner of their lives; had been, ever since that moment when the foreman of the jury had stood and cleared his throat. He walked into the bedroom, feeling the carpet crunch beneath his feet. He glanced down at a dozen, distorted reflections of himself in the shards of broken mirror, then across to where she lay, no more than a lump beneath the blankets. He turned and walked back the way he'd come. Back across the creaky floorboard.

In the bathroom, he skidded in the puddles of ivory face-cream. He stepped across the piss-coloured slicks of perfume. He kicked away the broken bottles into every corner.

So much that was designed to smell alluring, desirable, mingled unnaturally on floor and walls, making him heave… He moved across to the sink, afraid he would retch. He found it filled with the contents of the cabinet that stood empty above it. Blusher and lipstick and eye-shadow ground into the porcelain. Moisturiser clogging the plughole like poisonous waste. Powder and shampoo and bath oil, thrown and poured and sprinkled. The edges of her fancy soaps blunted against the walls. Dents in the plasterboard, pink as babies, blue as bruises. The mirror cracked, and spattered with nail varnish, red as arterial spray…

He ran a tap into the perfumed swamp, splashed water on to his face. He looked around at her handprints in talcum, the finger trails dragged through brightly coloured body lotion. Hints of herself left behind in everything she was trying to discard.

She'd been fine until they'd found her out, hadn't she? Fine with the knowledge of what she'd done as long as it stayed just between her and Franklin. Now the guilt was eating at her, wasn't it? Sending her fucking mental or making her pretend that she was, it didn't really matter which. Half a minute later he was walking back down the stairs, thinking, She lied, she lied, she lied, she lied…

She. Lied.

Thorne might well have gone right off Eve Bloom had she been a morning person – one of those deeply annoying types who is always bright-eyed and bushy-tailed whatever the ungodly hour. As it was, he was relieved to find her wedged into a quiet corner, clutching a polystyrene cup filled with seriously strong tea, and grimacing at nothing in particular. She clearly felt as much like a warmed-up bag of shit as he did…

Thorne cranked his face into action and forced a smile. 'And there I was, thinking that you'd be full of the joys of it.' She stared at him, said nothing. 'Fired up by the noise and the colour, intoxicated by the sweet smell of a million flowers…'

She scowled. 'Bollocks.'

Thorne shivered slightly and rubbed his arms through the sleeves of his leather jacket. It might have been the hottest summer for a good few years, but at this time in the morning it was still distinctly bloody nippy.

'Like that then?' he said. 'Floristry losing its appeal, is it?'

She took a noisy slurp of tea. 'Some aspects get ever so slightly on my tits, yes…'

They stepped back as a trolley piled high with long, multicoloured boxes came past. The porter behind it winked at Eve, laughed when she gave him the finger.

'You know you want me, Evie,' he shouted, wheeling the trolley away.

She turned back to Thorne. 'So, you love everything about your job, do you?'

'No, not everything. I'm not big on post-mortems or armed sieges. Or team-building seminars…'

'There you go, then…'

'Most of the time though, I think I love it…'

There was the first hint of a smile. She was starting to enjoy their double act. 'Sounds to me like maybe you love it, but you're not in love with it…'

'Right.' Thorne nodded. 'Problems with commitment.'

She blew on to the tea, her pale face deadpan. 'Typical bloke,' she said. Then she laughed and Thorne got his first glimpse that day of the gap in her teeth that he liked so much…

They moved methodically through the vast, indoor market. Up and down the wide concrete aisles. He followed a few steps behind her, cradling his own cup of rust-coloured tea and feeling himself coming slowly to life, the creases cracking open. Taking it all in… The shouts and whistles of traders and customers alike echoing through the gigantic warehouse. Twenty-and fifty-pound notes counted out and slapped into palms. Porters humping boxes or steering noisy forklifts in their green, fluorescent jackets. All the colours the stock, the signs, the punters' fleecy tops and puffa jackets – all standing out against the dazzling white buzz of a thousand striplight, dangling from the girders forty feet above.

Eve Bloom clearly knew every inch of this space the size of two football pitches; where to find every wholesaler and specialist; where to get the pots, the bulbs, the sundries; the location of any plant, flower or tree among tens of thousands of others. Thorne watched as she ordered, as she haggled and as she connected with stallholders and market staff.

'All right, Evie darlin'…'

'How are you, sweetheart…?'

'Here she is! Where you been hiding yourself, love…?'

Despite her earlier stab at grumpiness, Thorne could see that she really enjoyed this part of the job. The smile was instant, the banter good natured and flirtatious. If her customers liked her half as much as those she was buying from, her shop was probably doing pretty well. For all this, it was clear that she drove a hard bargain and would take nothing unless the price was right. The wholesalers shook their heads as they tapped at their computer keyboards or scribbled in their pink order books. 'I'm cutting my throat selling at this price…' Within half an hour she was done and there was no shortage of porters volunteering to load up her boxes and take them out to where her small white van was parked.

Once business was out of the way, she took Thorne on one last circuit of the market. She showed him a bewildering selection of different flowers – the ones she liked or hated, the sweetest smelling and the oddest looking. She pointed out the red and yellow gerberas, lined up neatly in rows and stacked in small square boxes like fruit. The pink peonies, the orange protea like pin cushions, and the phallic anthuriums, their heads like something Dennis Bethell might photograph. Thorne saw enough Jersey carnations to fill every buttonhole at a century's worth of society weddings and enough lilies for a thousand good funerals. He looked at daisies and delphiniums, the stuff of cheap and cheerful bouquets for desperate men to buy from petrol station forecourts in the early hours. Then there were gangling, blue and orange birds of paradise at five pounds a stem and fruiting lemon trees in vast pots, both surely destined for the dining tables and bespoke conservatories of Hampstead and Highgate.

Thorne nodded, asked the occasional question, looked keen. When she asked, he told her he was enjoying himself. In truth, though he was impressed by her knowledge and touched to a degree by her enthusiasm, he was dreaming of bacon sandwiches…

Half an hour later, and Thorne's fantasy had become greasy reality. Eve had kept him company, working her way through sausage, egg and chips like a long-distance lorry driver. It may or may not have been her breakfast of choice, but the card was not the sort of place that offered much in the way of a healthy alternative.

'How often do you do this?' Thorne asked.

'Harden my arteries or get up horribly early?'

'The market…'