Mark Billingham - Lazybones

Each time, Thorne had fought a bizarre urge to stop the movement. To step across and grasp the legs that protruded from dirty shorts like bloated blood sausages. To clutch the feet, purple with lividity, straining against the straps of the plastic sandals.

Thorne had stood by the bed in the middle of the studio, remembering a pair of pale girls, writhing on nylon sheets.

He had watched a SOCO leaning across the mattress, scraping at whatever had dripped down from the body that dangled above it.

He had looked up at the tongue that stuck out from Dodd's mouth. Blue, and big as a man's hand. Telling him to fuck off. Once it had been cut down and loaded up, Thorne had been only too grateful to do precisely as Dodd's corpse had seemed to be requesting. Home for a change of clothes, and food he couldn't finish. Four hours not sleeping, and then back to the murder scene. Opposite him, the girl finished the last mouthful of her sandwich. She wiped the back of a hand across her mouth, reached down behind the kiosk for her handbag. She shrugged at Thorne and began to apply lipstick.

Thorne turned at the sound of the door opening. Holland stepped out. He moved across to join Thorne, unzipping his bodysuit and gulping down the fresh air as he walked.

'Fuck, it's hot in there.'

Thorne handed Holland the bottle of water. 'How much longer?'

'Almost done, I think.'

Holland stood next to Thorne, leaning back against the window of the fishmonger's shop. They stared across at the peep show and t pavement cafe. A waiter smiled across at them. They might just have been friends enjoying the good weather, their plastic outfits far from being the most outlandish on display.

'So he's probably just cleaning up after himself,' Holland said. 'He kills Dodd to make sure he can't say anything.'

'Maybe…'

Holland turned, pressed his hands against the window, already dusted for fingerprints. The fishmonger had been given very little time to get his stock into the freezer room and no time at all to clean up afterwards. Holland looked at the pink swirl of blood and fish guts, floating on top of the water in a metal tray. 'He knew you'd get it.' He nodded towards the window. Flies bumped against the glass, buzzing around the scattered flaps of puckered skin. 'He knew you'd understand what that photo meant.'

Thorne nodded. 'Oh, he knew I'd been here all right.' Holland looked sideways at him, raised an eyebrow. 'Don't get excited. Yeah, he might have followed me, or he might be Trevor Jesmond hearing voices from the devil, but I think there's probably a simpler explanation.'

Holland turned, listening. 'I think you were right. I think Dodd was killed because of what he could tell us. And because he was threatening to.'

'Dodd tried to blackmail the killer?'

Thorne folded his arms. 'Only the daft twat didn't know he was a killer, did he? I can't prove any of it, obviously…'

'It sounds feasible,' Holland said.

'Dodd was lying, of course he was. That crap about the killer keeping his crash helmet on, about not having any records. I should have fucking pulled him on it…'

'You weren't to know.'

'Yes, I was. If wankers like Dodd are breathing, they're lying. He didn't know who we were after, or why, but that didn't matter. If he thought I was chasing someone who hadn't paid their TV licence, he'd have lied through his back teeth, as long as he could see a way to make money out of it.'

They watched as a middle-aged man handed over his money at the peep-show kiosk and hurried inside. The girl caught Thorne's eye, put her thumb to the tips of her fingers and made a wanking gesture. Thorne didn't know whether she was indicating what the man would be doing or what she thought of him. Or what she thought of them… Holland cleared his throat and took a drink. 'So, after you come round and show him the photo of Jane Foley, he contacts the killer…'

Thorne stepped away from the window, turned and looked up towards the second floor where the studio was. 'I've been through the place and there's no sign of an address book or anything like that anywhere…'

'Maybe the killer took it,' Holland said.

'He might have done.' Thorne put his hand up to shield his eyes from the sun. 'Let's go over every inch again, anyway. If there's a scrap of paper with an address or phone number on it, I want it found.'

'What about phone records?'

Thorne nodded, pleased that Holland was thinking so fast, was so close behind him. 'I've got Andy Stone on to it. I want everything, landline and mobile, if Dodd had one. Every call he made since the day I was here…'

'He might have just gone round, if he had an address…'

'In which case we're stuffed.' Thorne reached across for the water bottle. He took a swig, held the now tepid water in his mouth for a while before swallowing. 'We're still none the wiser as to how the killer hooked up with Dodd in the first place. People like Dodd don't advertise. It's word of mouth, it's contacts…'

'We've already spoken to everybody we could find,' Holland said.

'Anybody who's ever taken so much as a snap of their wife's tits in that studio has made a statement.'

'So talk to them again. And find me some you haven't spoken to at all.' Holland groaned, let his head drop back against the glass. 'Just get on it, Dave,' Thorne said. 'Yvonne can work up a new list. I'll catch up with you later.'

While Holland climbed out of his bodysuit, Thorne watched as two young media types stood up from their table at the care opposite and shook hands. They were dressed casually in shorts and trainers, but their top-of-the-range mobiles and designer sunglasses gave them away. An advertising campaign agreed maybe, or a TV project given the green light.

He wondered if they knew that only a few hundred yards away, in an attic room over a coffee shop on Frith Street, John Logie-Baird had given the first-ever public demonstration of television nearly eighty years before.

Thorne opened the door, took a second or two before heading back inside…

Christ, a commercial break would be nice. A catchable made-for TV killer would be even nicer. He might just as well have been a TV cop. For the umpteenth time that morning, Thorne watched a passerby dock him, the bodysuit, the police tape.., and look around eagerly for the camera.

After the post-mortem at Westminster Mortuary, they walked over to a small Italian place near the Abbey. Talked about murder over pizzas and Peroni.

'I think Dodd was beaten until he was more or less unconscious,'

Hendricks said. 'Then the killer tied the line around his neck, tossed it over the lighting bar and hauled him up.' Thorne nodded, took a swig of beer. 'Would have taken a fair bit of strength…'

'So we know he's not a nine-stone weakling. What else?'

'He's a nasty fucker…'

'We knew that already.'

Hendricks poured more chili oil over what he had left of an American Hot. 'Dodd wakes up pretty bloody quickly when he works out what's going on but it's far too sodding late by then. The killer ties the line off, picks up his camera and starts taking pictures.'

'How long?' Thorne asked.

'He'd have blacked out in a couple of minutes.' Hendricks speared a sliced of pepperoni, popped it into his mouth. 'Death through cerebral hypoxia pretty quickly afterwards…'

Thorne thought about it. Dodd had been a sleazy piece of shit, but he hadn't deserved that. Dancing at the end of a line, like something in the shop next door. Tearing at the flesh of his own neck. Staring through half-closed eyes at the maniac responsible, calmly snapping away, trying to capture his best side…

'When they talk about killers like this, they use words like "organised" and "disorganised",' Thorne said. 'Two basic categories. The ones who plan carefully, who follow an almost ritualised pattern of killing, of cleaning up after themselves. And those who just act on instinct, who don't have as much control over what they're