Mark Billingham - Lazybones

Half an hour after Victor had left and whatever tea was still in the pot had gone stone cold, Thorne and his father had stood together on the doorstep. Both, for very different reasons, trying to find the right thing to say.

Jim Thorne had never been one for tactile displays of affection. Occasionally a handshake, but not today. Instead, with a twinkle in his eye, he had leaned in close and, as if imparting a great pearl of wisdom, told Thorne that 'Three Steps to Heaven' by Eddy Cochrane had been number one in the hit parade on the day he'd been born. Thorne kicked off his shoes, put his feet up. on the seat opposite. What his father had said, what he'd remembered, was, he supposed, touching in its own way…

The music in his headphones was slow, and lush and strange. Thorne couldn't make head or tail of the lyrics and there were horns, for crying out loud. Not Ring of Fire-style Tijuana trumpets, or mariachi, but proper horns, like you'd hear on a soul record… Thorne ejected the Lambchop CD, put it back into its jewel case. Another time, perhaps. He put on Steve Earle's 'Train a Comin" and closed his eyes.

Soul was all well and good, but there were times when guts sounded a whole lot better.

It was stupidly easy.

He never ceased to be amazed at how pathetic these animals were. How simple it was to lead them by the nose. By the nose between their legs… It was less than a week since the first casual remarks had been exchanged and already he could start thinking specifically about when and where Southern was going to be killed. It had been such a piece of piss that he half regretted all that effort with the others. The months of planning, the buildup, the letters. It might have been just as easy to wait until after they'd been released and collar them in a bar somewhere. Just smile and say hello. People like that, like Southern, didn't need subtlety. Fuckers didn't understand it, wouldn't recognise it. Using their cocks like blunt instruments…

He'd won Southern's trust quickly, and now that he had it, the rest-was fairly straightforward. Times and places. Arrangements. It was all about trust, about getting it and keeping it. The gaining of trust was something he was good at. People gave it to him all the time, like a gift, without him needing to ask for it.

By contrast, he never, ever gave it. Not any more. He knew very well what could happen if you did.

Carol lifted the handset and dialed, checking the number on her pad twice as she pressed each button carefully. She reached over to straighten a picture on the wall as the phone at the other end began to ring.

She had only been able to stand watching McKee tit about for so long before she'd taken over herself. Two and a half days spent on the phone, digging through records at Companies House, getting wound up. Reminding herself of how shit the job was most of the time.

'Nobody made you do it,' Jack had said. 'Nobody would think any the worse of you if you chucked it in.'

Nobody except her…

Tracking down Baxters, the company Alan Franklin had worked for in Colchester nearly thirty years before, had proved enormously frustrating. She'd discovered quickly that the company, a stationery wholesaler, had not only left the area in the early eighties, but had changed its name. She was pretty much starting from scratch. She had spoken to every company in the south of England able to provide so much as a plain brown envelope, and got precisely nowhere. Then, just at the point when Jack was starting to talk about divorce, she'd got lucky. The personnel manager of a firm in Northampton knew everybody in the stationery supply business, played golf with most of them, God help him! He was only too delighted to tell her exactly where to find the person she needed to talk to, and gave her the name of a company in King's Lynn…

'Hello, Bowyer-Shotton, may I help you?'

'Yes, please,' Carol said. 'I'd like to speak to Paul Baxter.'

'I'll put you through…'

Andy Stone sat, sweating through his white linen shirt, some small fraction of his mind on the report he was writing up… He thought about the woman he'd woken up next to. He remembered the look on her face the night before, and the look she'd given him as she'd slipped out of his bed that morning without a word… She'd been attending a tedious conference at the Greenwood Hotel a couple of weeks earlier, when Ian Welch had been killed. Stone had interviewed her, given her his number in case there was anything else she remembered. She'd remembered that she fancied him, rung and asked if he wanted to go for a drink.

He guessed that she was turned on by the fact that he was a copper. A lot of women seemed to find it exciting. The power, the handcuffs, the war stories. Whatever the reason, once the novelty wore off, most of them seemed to lose interest in him very quickly. Meantime, the sex was usually pretty good…

He wanted to control things in bed. He liked to be on top, the woman's arms flung above her head, his hands around her skinny wrists, pushing himself up and away from her while he was doing it. He'd done weights, built up his chest and arms so that he could hold the position for as long as he needed to.

Last night had started really well. She'd looked up at him, her eyes wide, and said all the right things, just the sort of words he imagined hearing whenever he thought about it. She told him he was too big, that he might hurt her. He threw back his head, gritted his teeth, pushed harder…

Then she'd spoiled things. She'd begun to moan, to grab at his sh0ulders to say that she liked it rough. Then, between ragged breaths, she'd told him that she wanted him to hurt her. In seconds he had shrunk and slipped out of her. He dropped down and rolled on to his side, listening to her sigh, aware of her inching across to her own side of the bed, so that no part of their bodies were touching…

Stone looked up at the greeting of a colleague passing his desk. He smiled and continued to type. He remembered the warm feeling of his hand, cupped between his legs, and the sound of the woman's body sliding across the sheet as it edged away from him. Carol had been put on hold…

She had probably been listening to Celine Dion for no more than a couple of minutes, but she could feel herself growing a hell of a lot older.

Moments like this, the empty minutes that made up so much of any case, made her glad she'd agreed to take the job on the clear understanding that she could work from home. She'd guessed that AMRU would not be given the swankiest office facilities, and working as they did (or were supposed to do) in teams of just two, she'd have been lucky to get a cupboard.

Jack had cleared a space for her in the spare room. They set up the old computer that his daughter had used, and shelled out twenty quid on an extra handset for the cordless phone. Her filing system consisted of yellow Post-It notes stuck around a picture frame, her husband doubled as a coffee machine, and when Carol glanced at the mirror above her desk, she saw dusty hat boxes, old lamps without plugs and a collection of china dogs that had seemed like a good idea a couple of years before.

It was cramped, but she liked her things around her.

The day she'd taken up residence in her new office, Jack had stood behind her and they'd both stared into the mirror. Carol sat at her desk and smiled at the rubbish they'd amassed together down the years, piled up on the single bed behind her. The reflection of her retired self.

'That'll stop you getting too carried away,' Jack said. The muzak came to an abrupt and merciful halt. 'Can I help you?' a man asked.

'Yes. Paul Baxter, please…'

'Wrong department, love. You've come through to accounts. Let me try and transfer you…'

Ten seconds of clicking and then a familiar voice. Carol's heart was already sinking as she spoke.