Mark Billingham - Lazybones

'Anyway…'

'So how can I help you?' Paul Baxter laughed. He had a low, sexy voice. Smooth, like a DJ. 'Does the Met need some new headed notepaper?'

'Do you remember an employee called Alan Franklin? He would have left in…'

Baxter cut her off. 'God, yes, of course I do. I was helping out in the warehouse when all that happened, working for my old man. Run-up to Christmas, I think…'

'When all what happened?'

She could hear confusion, suspicion even, in Baxter's voice as he answered. 'Well, I don't suppose we'll ever know for sure, but I remember the court case obviously. God, and all that dreadful stuff afterwards '

Carol realised suddenly that she was on her feet, leaning on her desk. In the mirror she saw the face of a woman who, for the first time in three long years, was feeling the buzz. Feeling it across her chest like a heart attack. In her head like a hole that sucked away the breath in a second. Rushing through her blood and bone like light. Like a lease of life.

'Hello…?'

She became dimly aware of Baxter's voice on the other end of the phone. She lowered herself into the chair, took just another second before moving on.

'OK, Mr. Baxter, when can I come and see you?'

Done and dusted…

The suggestion had come from Southern himself. How brilliant was that?! An invitation back to Southern's small flat in Leytonstone had been politely declined. He'd already decided that he would be sticking with the hotel. Southern had gone for that idea straight away – same as the others had. There was something about a hotel that gave the rendezvous an excitement for them. It was the same for him as well, of course, but then he knew just how exciting it was really going to be… The hotels he'd chosen, on each occasion so far, had suited the mood of the event, and the character of the individual concerned, perfectly. He always gave some thought to that, as well as to the necessary issues of security. Remfry, if he'd had the chance, would have done it up a back-alley, acro a rusty oil drum. The place in Paddington had the seediness that got him off,, the squalor that turned him on. Welch, on the other hand, had wanted somewhere a bit nicer. He was clearly a man with aspirations, ideas above his station. The Greenwood had fitted the bill nicely.

The place that he'd found for Howard Southern would be ideal. It was a small, country-house-type hotel in leafy Roehampton. On the outskirts of Richmond Park, there was a romantic, woodland view from some of the bedrooms.

He was sure that it would go down well. Howard Southern loved the countryside. Hadn't he brutally beaten and raped his first victim on a disused bridle path in Epping Forest?

Done and dusted.

Two Bs and a C. Two Bs and a C…

The results she needed to see when she opened that envelope at the end of August. The offer from the 'university she wanted. The grades that she had to get if she was going to take up her place on the drama course in Manchester. Two Bs and a C. It had become Fiona Meek's mantra in the weeks since her final paper.

Most of her friends were still celebrating the end of the exams. One or two of those with parents richer than her own were away travelling, and the rest were pissing it up the wall in one way or another. There were only a couple, like her, who had decided to put a bit of money away and take summer jobs. She knew she could be a bit too sensible sometimes, but she didn't mind missing out. She didn't care if her friends took the mickey. They wouldn't be laughing when their student loans ran out halfway through the first term. It was the perfect job, and plenty of people wanted it. A friend of her dad's was the corporate hospitality manager and had put in a good word. Working the two shifts suited her. It was an early start, but she was finished mid-morning and not on again until teatime, so she had her days to herself.

Fiona waved as, further up the corridor, she saw one of the other girls coming out of a room, dumping dirty towels into the laundry hamper. She parked her own trolley, began loading soap and shampoo into a small basket. The smell was familiar from the mountain of stuff she now had in her own bathroom at home.

The seven-to-ten bedroom shift was the hardest. She'd been amazed these last couple of weeks to see just what pigs some people lived like when they weren't at home. She hadn't had any really bad ones yet – no used condoms, or what have you – but still, some people behaved like animals. Equally weird were the rooms that barely looked lived-in at all. Towels neatly folded and beds made. These were the sort of people, Fiona supposed, who tidied their houses before their cleaners came round. Either way, as she moved around the bedrooms, replenishing toiletries and coffee sachets, smoothing sheets and checking mini bars, she tried to get inside the heads of these people whom she rarely ever met. She tried to flesh out lives she could only guess at by the labels. strangers' shoes, the smells in their bathrooms and the paperbacks by the sides of their beds.

It was all good practice, she reckoned, for being an actress. If she ever got the chance. Two Bs and a C. Two Bs and a C… She slid the plastic pass-key into the lock and shoved open a bedroom door.

A lot of murders went unsolved, but compared to the clean-up rates for burglary, Thorne reckoned that he, and others like him, were doing pretty bloody well.

'For fuck's sake, Chris, it's been nearly three weeks. You must know most of the likely lads in the area…'

On the other end of the phone, Chris Barratt laughed like a drain. It sounded to Thorne as if this conversation was making the Kentish Town crime-desk sergeant's day.

'You're not a punter, Tom,' Barratt said. 'You know what it's like. This early on a Saturday morning, you want to count yourself lucky there was anybody here to answer the bleeding phone…'

Thorne knew how stretched things were in many areas. Violent street-crime was, quite rightly, being targeted, and uniformed manpower was being taken away from such everyday London trivialities as common housebreaking. He was aware that because he was on the job, they were probably making twice the effort they would normally be making to lay hands on whoever had turned his flat over. He also knew that twice nothing was pretty much fuck all.

'Three weeks, though, Chris…'

'We found your car.'

'Yeah, and got nothing off it…'

'It was burnt out…'

'Only on the inside.'

The Mondeo had been found on an estate behind Euston Station. The inside had been torched, the wheels nicked and the words POLICE WANKERS spray-painted or the roof. Yet more cause for amusement around the Incident Room at Beck House…

'What about fences?' Thorne asked. 'The bastard should have got something for my CD system…'

'Duh! We never thought about that…'

Thorne sighed. He took the gum he'd been chewing out of his mouth and lobbed it out of the open window. 'Sorry, Chris. Any kind of fucking result would be good at the minute, you know?'

'You're sorted with the insurance, aren't you?' Barratt said.

'Yeah, fine.' Thorne was still waiting for the money to come through, car and contents, but there was no reason why it shouldn't…

'So are you really that bothered?'

A clammy Saturday morning. Working up a sweat in slow motion. The arse-end of a week that felt like a tight space he was too big to squeeze through.

'Yes, I'm bothered,' Thorne said. 'So should you be. And when you eventually catch the little toe-rag who used my bedroom as a khazi, he's going to be very fucking bothered…'

A guest in a smart suit hurried past her towards the lift. Fiona said good morning and put the back of a rubber-gloved hand across her mouth to stifle a yawn. She moved up the corridor towards the next bedroom, thinking about what she might do later on. The early evening shift was usually a bit of a doddle. A chance to flirt with her favourite waiter as she cleaned the tables in the bar, or to gossip with the girls in reception while she hoovered. A couple of times she'd managed to finish all her jobs double-quick and find a quiet corner, somewhere out of sight, where she could sit and open a book. If she wasn't too knackered, she might go out for a couple of drinks, catch up with some of her mates. Maybe she could slip away from work a few minutes early…