Mark Billingham - Lazybones

'You get the transcripts of that trial, mate. Have a look at some of the things they said about Jane in court. Made her sound like a total slag. Especially that copper, talking about what she was wearing..-.'

'It was handled badly,' Thorne said. 'Back then a lot of rapists got off, simple as that. I'm sure you're right about what happened to Jane, about Franklin.'

Foley took a drag, then a drink, and leaned back, nodding. He looked across at Thorne, like he was re-evaluating him. Thorne glanced at Holland. Time to move on. As far as the interview went, they hadn't worked out a system – who would ask what, who was going to take the lead – they never did. Holland did the writing. That was about as far as it went.

'Did you know that Alan Franklin was dead?' Holland said. 'He died in 1996.'

Now it was Thorne's turn to do the evaluating. He studied Foley's face, trying to read the reaction. All he saw, or thought he saw, was momentary shock, and then delight.

'Fucking good,' Foley said. 'I hope it was painful.'

'It was. He was murdered.'

'Even better.: Who do I send a thank-you letter to?'

Thorne stood up and began to wander about. Foley was getting altogether too comfortable. Thorne was not considering the man to be a suspect, not at the moment anyway, but he always preferred his interviewees on the back foot…

'Why do you think he did it, Peter?' Thorne said. 'Why did Dennis kill her?' Foley stared back at him, sucked his teeth. He emptied the last of the lager into his mouth and crushed the can in his hand.

Thorne repeated the question. 'Why did your brother kill his wife?'

'How should I know?'

'Did he believe what they said about Jane in court?'

'I don't…'

'He must have thought about it at least…'

'Den thought about a lot of things.'

'Did he think his wife wag a slag?'

'Course he fucking didn't…'

'Maybe they had problems in bed afterwards..'

Foley leaned forward suddenly, dropped the empty can at his feet.

'Listen, Jane went weird afterwards, all right? She had a breakdown. She stopped going out, stopped talking to anyone, stopped doing anything at all. She was mates with this girl I was seeing at the time, you know, we all used to go out together, but after the trial, no… after the rape, she just wasn't there any more. Den pretended like everything was fine, but he was bottling it all up. He always did. So, when Franklin walked out of that court like Nelson fucking Mandela, like he'd been the victim…'

Thorne watched as Foley leaned back, Jell back on the sofa and began to spin one of the half-dozen silver rings on the fingers of his left hand.

'Look, I don't know what Den thought, all right? He said some mad stuff at the time, but he was all over the place. They make you doubt things, don't they? That was their job in that court, to make the jury doubt, and they did a bloody good job. I mean, you're supposed to trust the police, aren't you, to believe them…?'

Foley looked up and across at Holland, then turned to look at Thorne. For the first time he looked his age. Thorne looked at the cracks across Peter Foley's face, saw hard drugs in his past and perhaps even in his present.

'Something snapped,' Foley said, quietly.

For no good reason that he could think of, Thorne took a step across the room and bent to pick up the beer can from the floor. He put it down on a dusty, chrome and glass shelving unit next to the TV, then turned back to Foley.

'What happened to the children?'

'Sorry…?'

'Mark and Sarah. Your nephew and niece. What happened to them afterwards?'

'Straight afterwards, you mean? After they found…?'

'Later on. Where did they go?'

'Into care. The police took them away and then the social services got involved. There was some counseling went on, I think. More so for the boy as I remember, he'd have been eight or nine…'

'He was seven. His sister was five.'

'Yeah, that sounds right.'

'So…?'

'So, eventually, they were fostered.'

'I see.'

'Look, there was only Jane's mum and she was already knocking on. No other way, really. I said I'd have the kids, me and my girlfriend, but nobody was very keen. I was only twenty-two…'

'And of course, your brother had just bashed their mother's brains out with a table lamp…'

'I said I'd have them. I wanted to have them…'

'So you stayed in touch with the kids?'

'Course…'

'Did you see much of them?'

'For a while, but they moved around. It wasn't always easy.'

'You've got the names and addresses?'

'Which…?'

'The foster parents'. You said the kids moved around. Were there many?'

'A few.'

'You've got all the details?'

'Not any more. I mean, I did then, yeah. There were Christmas cards, birthdays…'

'And then you just lost touch?'

'Well, you do, don't you?'

'So you'd have no idea at all where Sarah and Mark are living now?'

Foley blinked, laughed humourlessly. 'What, you mean you lot haven't?'

'We've traced every Mark Foley in the country. Every Sarah Foley or Sarah Whatever nee Foley, and none of them remembers wandering into the hall and seeing their father dangling from a tow rope. Nobody recalls popping upstairs to find Mum lying in a pool of blood with her skull caved in. Call me old fashioned, but I don't think that sort of thing would slip your mind.'

Foley shook his head. 'I can't help you, mate. Even if I could, it would go against the bloody grain…'

Thorne looked at Holland. Time to go. As they stood up, Foley swung his legs up on to the sofa, reached down beside it for another can of lager.

'Before everything happened, before it all went tits up, Jane and Den were normal, you know? Just a normal couple with two kids and an OK house and all the rest of it. They were a good team, they were doing all right, and I reckon they'd have got over what that arsehole did to Jane. I mean, couples do, don't they, eventually, and Den would have helped her, because he loved her. But what came after, what happened to them in that trial, and the stuff later on… you don't get over that, ever. And that's down to you.'

Foley was talking about something that had happened a long time ago. He was talking about mistakes that it was too late to put right, and about a police officer long-since retired.

But he was pointing at Thorne.

Thorne enjoyed expensive wine, but rather more often, cheap lager. This particular brand, which had caught his eye in the off-licence, was the same one Peter Folly had been drinking… Another Saturday when he hadn't got home until gone ten o'clock. Eve would probably still have been up, he could have called, but he hadn't bothered. He had only managed to see her once in the last fortnight, and though they'd talked often on the phone, he'd sensed a tension starting to creep in. He was starting to use his workload as an excuse.

Thorne knew very well that when it came to relationships, he was basically bone idle. He'd been that way with the girls he'd copped off with in the fifth form, he'd been that way with his first serious girlfriends and he'd been that way with Jan. Happy to sink into a rut, wary of changing direction. Eventually, of course, Jan had changed direction herself. Got creative with her creative-writing lecturer… All because he was comfortable being stuck in the mud, and now he could feel it going the same way with Eve.

There was the bed thing, for a kick-off. As he lay with his feet up on the sofa which would soon become his bed for another night, he thought about the whole, stupid business of his failure to buy a new mattress. The trip they'd arranged the week before had been cancelled for obvious reasons. He'd joked with Eve about burglars and murderers conspiring to keep them from shagging, but in reality, the delays had been.., convenient. There was a part of him, a nasty part he was reluctant to acknowledge, that worried about how interested in Eve he would really be once he'd got her into bed, but that wasn't really the problem. At the end of the day, he was just plain, bloody lazy… From his brand-new speakers came the mournful tones of Johnny Cash, singing his sublime version of Springsteen's 'Highway Patrolman'. As Cash sang about nothing feeling better than blood on blood, Thorne thought that if any voice could capture the love and agony, the hatred and the joy, of family ties, it was his. It helped if you'd lived it, of course.