Mark Billingham - Lazybones

Stone thought about it. Holland bounced the bin-bag against his knees.

'I suppose I'd give a bit more of a shit if he'd been a forger,' Stone said. 'Less if he'd murdered half a dozen schoolgirls…'

Holland looked at the expression on Stone's face. He couldn't help but laugh as they began to move away, back towards the entrance. 'I don't believe it. You've actually got a fucking sliding scale…'

They walked up Parkway towards the pay and display bay where Stone had parked the Cougar. At regular intervals, rubbish bags like the one Holland was carrying were piled high on the pavement. After Madame Tussaud's, Camden's Sunday market was now the second most popular tourist attraction in the city, and cleaning up after it was becoming a little like painting the Forth Bridge.

'So, what is it now? Couple of months till the baby?' Stone asked. Holland swung the bin-bag from one hand to the other. 'Ten weeks.'

'Sophie must be the size of a house…'

Holland smiled, turned to look into the window of a Japanese restaurant. The plates of plastic sushi, red and yellow and pink. He promised himself that one of these days he'd try some. They turned left and Stone unlocked the car with a remote. 'So?

Excited then?'

'Yeah, she's very excited.'

Stone opened the car door. Looked at Holland across the roof. 'I meant you…'

'Get your arse up. Right up in the air, that's it. Now, let your fingers do the walking…'

Charlie Dodd was making himself useful. The place had been hired out for a web-cam session and he'd thrown in his services, gratis. He was cheerfully relaying on-screen instructions to the bored-looking girl on the bed when the phone rang.

'Just do some moaning for a minute, sweetheart…'

His hand was slippery against the receiver as he mumbled a greeting and waited.

'I got your message…'

Dodd recognised the voice straight away. Without looking round he used his hand to indicate to the girl on the bed that she should carry on, then brought it to his mouth and took out the cigarette.

'I was wondering when I was going to hear back from you.'

'I've had a busy weekend.'

Dodd reached for a plastic cup, flicked fag-ash into the inch of cold tea at the bottom. 'Anything interesting?'

For a few seconds there was nothing but the crackle of static. 'You said something about doing me a favour.'

'Done you a favour, mate,' Dodd said. 'Already did it. A big favour.'

'Go on…'

Dodd thought that the man on the other end of the phone sounded relaxed. He was probably putting it on, of course, trying to sound cool because he could guess what was coming. Because he knew he might have to part with some money and wanted to be in control in case there was haggling to do. It was a pretty convincing act though. Sounded like he knew what Dodd was going to say…

'The police were here with one of the photos you did. A photo of the girl with the hood on.' Dodd waited for a reaction. Didn't get it. 'I got asked a lot of questions…'

'And did you tell any lies, Mr. Dodd?'

Dodd pinched the cigarette between thumb and forefinger, took a final drag. 'A couple of little white ones, yeah. And one dirty, big fucker.' He dropped the nub-end into the plastic cup, turned and watched the girl on the bed. 'I told them I never saw your face. Said you never took the crash helmet off…'

The girl's rear end bobbed and swayed. Dodd thought the moaning was a bit over the top – silly cow sounded like she had food poisoning. There were red blotches at the top of her legs. Finally, the man on the other end of the phone spoke…

'Come on, Mr. Dodd, spit it out. Don't be shy.'

Dodd reached into the top pocket of his shirt for another cigarette.

'I'm not fucking shy, mate…'

'Good, because there's really no need to be…'

'Not about money, anyway.'

The man laughed. 'There we are. No point in going round the houses. Now, if I remember rightly, there's a cashpoint just round the corner from your studio, isn't there…?'

Thorne was somewhere between Brent Cross and Golders Green when he began finding it hard to stay awake… He had been as good as the promise he'd made to himself and Holland that morning, having left the Royal Oak in time to make the last tube going south. He was tired and there was still plenty to sort out back at the flat, so it was no great wrench to walk out of the pub before closing time.

He'd left just as Phil Hendricks was starting to let rip. He'd made his feelings about the Sexual Offences Act clear plenty of times before. In the pub, once the subject of the Register had come up, there was no stopping him…

'Don't forget the gay men,' Hendricks had said. 'Those evil bastards who are twisted enough to enjoy loving, consensual sex with their seventeen-year-old boyfriends.' The words were spat out, the flat Mancunian vowels lending an edge of real anger to the irony. Thorne knew that Hendricks had every right to be pissed off. It was ridiculous that men convicted of what was still termed 'gross indecency' should be lumped together with child abusers and rapists. Even when the age of consent for gay men was lowered to sixteen, as one day it would be, Thorne knew that those convicted prior to its equalisation would remain on the Register.

Thorne could only agree with his friend's pithy assessment, the last words he'd caught as he walked out of the pub.

'It's a queer-basher's charter,' Hendricks had said. Eve had called to wish him a happy birthday as he was heading for the tube station at Colindale. As they talked, Thorne walked past the KFC, the chippy, more than one kebab shop. His stomach urged him to go in, then changed its mind as he told Eve about the burglary, and the little gift that had been left for him.

'Well, it's certainly original,' Eve had said. Thorne laughed. 'Right, and a home-made present's so much more thoughtful, isn't it?'

Thorne was walking slowly, absorbed in the conversation but keenly aware, as always, of exactly where he was and what he was doing. Keeping track of any movement on the other side of the street, at the corners up ahead, behind parked cars. This wasn't Tottenham or Hackney, but still, there was no point in being stupid when people were getting shot for PS9.99 handsets…

'So… when are you going to replace that bed?' Eve had asked.

'Oh, I suppose I'll get round to it eventually…'

'I sincerely hope so.'

They were joking, but suddenly Thorne sensed a real shift. A hint of impatience. Like she was making the running and wanted him to do some catching up.

'Well, we can always go to your place, can't we?' Thorne said. There was a pause. Then: 'It's a bit tricky. Denise can be funny about that sort of thing…'

'About you having men over?'

'About men staying over…'

Thorne heard Eve sigh, as if this was a conversation she'd had before. With Denise herself, most probably. 'Hang on, she has Ben round, doesn't she?'

'I know, it's mad. But trust me, it isn't worth going into…'

Then, Thorne had arrived at the station and they'd wound it up. While he fed coins into the ticket machine they'd made a hasty arrangement to meet the following week. She'd said goodbye as he went down on the escalator and he lost the signal before he could say it back.

The train was all but deserted. A teenage couple sat at the far end of the carriage, the girl's head on her boyfriend's shoulder. He was stroking her hair and muttering things which made her smile. Thorne took a deep breath. His brain felt fuzzed up. He'd only had a couple of pints but his head was thickening, getting heavier with every lurch and sway of the train. He needed to stay awake. Tempting as it was to close his eyes, to let his head drop back, the last thing he wanted to do was to nod off and wake up in Morden. He thought about the conversation with Eve. When they'd arranged to meet, why hadn't he pushed to make it sooner? Was that panic he'd felt when she'd been talking about the bed? Maybe with the case and his old man and the burglary there was too much other stuff going on. Maybe he was just subconsciously prioritising. He was definitely feeling far too fucked to think straight about anything… At Hampstead, a man got on through the doors to Thorne's right, and despite the availability of seats chose to stand at the end of the carriage, clutching on to the rail above his head. Thorne looked at the man. He was very tall and thin with chiseled features and a frenzy of graying hair and a battery of bizarre visual tics from which Thorne found it impossible to avert his gaze…