Mark Billingham - Lazybones

'Paul Baxter, please…'

'Is that you again? Sorry dear, you've come back to the switchboard. I'll put you through…'

The sun, blazing through even the grimiest of the big windows, had turned the Major Incident Room into a sauna by midday. Yvonne Kitson didn't really need to reapply her lipstick, but did it all the same. Any excuse to spend a few minutes in the cool of the toilets was welcome. She didn't usually wear a great deal of make-up. Just enough to feel good, but that was all. In this job more than most, people were quick to judge, to form instant opinions that would be passed around and set in stone before you'd so much as got your work-station organised. She knew very well what people thought about her. She knew what the likes of Tom Thorne thought she was, thought she did. She knew just how wide of the mark they were.

Make-up – the colours, how much, when you wore it – gave off a signal. It said you were this, or that. Concealing, lying, making it up… She stood for a few moments, looking at herself in the cracked mirror. She moved her head a few inches, until the crack ran right down the middle of her face. Until it looked about right.

She would give it one more minute…

She began to count down the time in her head. Fifty-five seconds more, then she would slam the phone down, make some tea and go and shout at her old man for a while. No, she would snatch the phone back up, call McKee and shout at him…

Carol began to swear repeatedly under her breath. Fuck, fuck, fuck. She'd turned her back on gardening, and old films in the afternoon, and the Reader's Digest, for this…

'Paul Baxter's phone…'

She almost cheered. 'Thank God. Is Mr. Baxter there?'

The woman sounded unsure. 'Well, he was here a minute ago. He might have grabbed an early lunch. Let me see if I can find him for you…

There was a clatter as the receiver was dropped, then-silence. Thirty seconds later Carol heard voices, then muffled laughter which grew suddenly louder before the receiver was picked up and abruptly replaced. Then she just heard a dial tone. Carol took a deep breath and dialed again, jabbing at the buttons as if each were the eyeball of a Bowyer-Shotton employee.

'Hello, Bowyer-Shotton, can you hold for a moment…?'

Carol shouted. 'No!'

It was too late…

Dave Holland was in a reasonable mood until the little gobshite started to get cocky.

'Listen, I don't think I have to go into the details…'

'Well, that depends, doesn't it?' Holland said. 'On just how much of a pain in the arse you want me to be.'

'I did some modeling up there. Fair enough?'

'Right. Catalogue stuff, was it? The Debenham's autumn collection…?'

'You want to know my connection with Charlie Dodd, so I'm telling you. I was booked to do some filming, all right?'

'Did you ever mention it to anybody else?' Holland asked. 'Pass Dodd's name on? Maybe you told somebody about the studio?'

There was a hollow-sounding bark of laughter down the line. 'Yeah. I was so proud of the work, wasn't I? I mean, London Cock Boys and Borstal Meat are fucking classics. Maybe you've seen them…'

Holland hung up, put a line through another name on the list. Charlie Dodd had known a lot of people. They'd worked their way through every number on his phone records and everyone appeared to have a valid, if occasionally sordid, reason for being a friend, or 'business associate'. Photographers, film developers and suppliers, video production companies, prostitutes. Each person was asked to give the name of anybody else they thought might have known Dodd and this, together with a few more contacts provided by Thorne's squeaky voiced snout, had generated another, much bigger list to be worked through.

Holland stifled a yawn. At the end of the day, it would probably result in nothing more than a handy contact list to pass on to Vice. It was certainly unlikely to provide any link to the killer as, contrary o what Thorne had said, Dodd had discovered that it did pay to advertise. One of the first numbers on the list had turned out to be a specialist S amp; M magazine. They were suitably saddened at the news that a much-valued client would not be placing any further small ads to advertise his facilities…

Holland leaned back in his chair, thrust up his arms and stretched. Wasting his time, as he'd wasted it the night before at home. Making calls that could have waited, crossing names off the list. An excuse, an escape…

Sophie had come through in her dressing gown. One hand cradling her stomach and the other holding a mug of tea. She'd put it down in front of Holland and stood looking over his shoulder at the paperwork on the tabletop, her hand resting on the top of his head. She'd laughed softly. 'Little sod's been kicking the shit out of me all day

…'

When Holland had looked up half a minute later, she'd been standing in the doorway. He'd picked up his tea, smiled a thank-you at her.

'I know you think I want you to choose,' she'd said. 'And I really don't. Yes, I sometimes hate what you do, and I get pissed off at your pig-headed boss and the fact that you worship the ground he walks on, but you know all that. Yes, I would be happy if you took some time off and, no, I don't want you doing anything stupid. Not now. I wouldn't ask you to make a choice though, Dave.' Then she'd turned to stare out of the window for a moment. 'I'd be too scared…'

For a few seconds there had been only the sound of the traffic rumbling up the Old Kent Road, and a radio from the flat downstairs. Holland had picked up the phone from its cradle, reached for his pen.

'Can we talk about it later?' He'd looked down at the papers on the desk, at the pointless list of names. 'This is really important…'

Thorne watched his team going through the motions. Holland, Stone, Kitson…

He saw dozens of other officers and civilian staff talking and writing and thinking – the impetus running out. As if the heat had thickened the air, made it a little harder to move through. Thorne stood watching from the doorway of the Incident Room, thinking about the thrashing limbs of a body near to death… It was always the same pattern. In the days that followed the discovery of a murder victim, the activity was frantic. An urgency seized the team, the knowledge that the hours, the days immediately following, would be when they had their best chance. After Dodd, they'd run around like blue-arsed flies, checking records and tracing contacts and taking statements and chasing couriers. Waiting for anything. And, gradually, as always, the flurry of activity on the case had slowed, like the movements of the victim himself as death had approached. The frenzy became drudgery. The phone was picked up and the statement taken reflexively, the small spark of hope fizzling to nothing, until the body of the investigation itself began to stiffen and cool, to swing aimlessly…

Something would be needed. The case, and those working it, needed a jolt to kick some life back into them. An external force, like the passing train that had given movement to Charlie Dodd's corpse. Thorne had no idea what it was, or where it might come from.

'Paul Baxter…'

'Am I speaking to Paul Baxter?'

'Yes, who's this?'

Carol felt a little of the tension in her back and neck begin to ease.

'My name's Carol Chamberlain, from the Metropolitan Police Area Major Review Unit. You would not believe the trouble I've had trying to get hold of you…'

'Get hold of me…?'

'You, your company…'

'We're in the phone book…'

'Right, but I was looking for Baxters.'

There was a pause. Carol could hear Baxter taking a drink of something, swallowing. 'Blimey, that was a long time ago. My dad got bought out in… '82, I think. I stayed on as head of sales when we moved up here, that was part of the deal…'