Mark Billingham - Lazybones

It was a little after two-thirty in the morning. When even the feelings had faded, there were only thoughts of the woman whose defilement and death long before had, it seemed, caused everything. Now she moved through his case as surely as if she were still corporeal and Thorne was ready to embrace her. She was nearly thirty years dead, and so was her killer, but that didn't matter.

In Jane Foley, Thorne had finally got a victim he could care about.

It was Monday morning. Seven weeks to the day since the body of Douglas Remfry had been found. More than twenty-five years since Jane Foley had been raped and subsequently battered to death. Thorne was still trying to work out the connection between the two murders. He hoped that the woman sitting opposite him might be able to help…

Despite its somewhat dodgy reputation, and the tired old jokes about the IQs and sexual habits of its womenfolk, Essex was full of surprises. As the oldest recorded town in the country and the capital of Roman Britain, Colchester had more history than most places. Still, the last thing Thorne expected from a council building in the middle of town was what looked like a small stately home in its own grounds.

The area office for the Adoption and Fostering Service was somewhat run-down, admittedly, but amazing nonetheless. Thorne had thought that all the period or faux-period properties in the area had been snapped up by footballers and armed robbers a long time ago. The surprise was evidently clear in his face as he and Holland were greeted by the Service Manager, and shown into a large office with dark oak paneling all around, and heavy wooden beams crisscrossing an ornate ceiling above.

'This was originally the coach-house. I know it looks nice, but trust me, it's a bastard to work in…' Joanne Lesser was a light-skinned black woman in her mid-thirties, tall and – so Thorne thought – a little on the thin side. Her hair was straight and lacquered, the brows heavy, framing a face that was severe until it broke into a smile. Then, it was all too easy to picture her laughing at a dirty joke in spite of herself, or tipsy at the Christmas party.

'The place is falling to pieces, basically,' she said. 'We can only put so much weight on the floors, the filing cabinets have to go against certain walls and nothing's level. You can find your chair rolling from one side of the office to the other, if you're not careful…'

Thorne and Holland smiled politely, unsure as to whether or not she'd finished. After a few seconds, she shrugged and raised an eyebrow to indicate that she was waiting for them.,

The only sound in the room came from a noisy, metal fan which looked like it might have been an antique itself. At the other end of the desk, an entire army of gonks, action figures and soft toys was lined up across the top edge of a grimy, beige computer.

'You spoke to DCI Brigstocke on the phone,' Thorne said. He raised his voice a little to make himself clearly heard above the fan.

'Mark and Sarah Foley?'

Lesser reached for a piece of paper on her desk and studied it.

'1976,' Holland added, trying to move things along.

'Right, well, I'm sure you weren't expecting it to be straightforward…'

She looked up and across at them, smiling. Thorne couldn't quite manage one in return. 'All I can really tell you with any certainty is that they were never fostered by anybody who is still registered with us as an active carer.'

Holland shrugged. 'I suppose it would have been too much to hope for…'

'Right,' Thorne said. He had been hoping nevertheless.

'We're talking over twenty-five years ago,' Lesser said. 'It's possible that the people who fostered them are still active, but have moved to another area.'

'How do we check that?' Thorne said.

She shook her head. 'Not a clue. It's pretty unlikely anyway, I'm just thinking aloud, really…'

Thorne could feel a headache starting to build. He shuffled his chair a little closer to the desk, pointed to the fan. 'I'm sorry, could we…?'

She leaned across and switched the fan off.

'Thanks,' Thorne said. 'We'll try to get through this as fast as we can. Why was what you told us the only thing you could tell us with any certainty?'

'Because the only files I have access to here are current. Those are the ones concerned with active carers.'

'That's the stuff on computer?'

She snorted. 'It wasn't until ten years ago that things even started being typed, and even now there's drill a load of stuff that's handwritten. It's not just the building that's past it…'

Thorne blinked slowly. It was just his luck to need help from an organisation whose systems were even more fucked up than the ones he worked with every day.

'But there are records, in one form or another, that go back further…'

'In one form or another, I suppose so. God knows what state they'll be in if you manage to lay your hands on them, a few scribbled pages nearly thirty years old. Hang on, some are on microfiche, I think…'

Thorne tried not to sound too impatient. 'There are records though?'

'Dead files…'

'Right, and the dead files, the files that would have the records from the mid-seventies, will be stored somewhere?'

'Yeah, they should be in Chelmsford, at County Hall. The law says we have to keep them.'

Holland muttered. 'Data Protection Act…'

'That's it. Everybody who's received a service from us has a right to see their records, to have access. Some people wait years. They come back in their forties or fifties, looking for details on people who fostered them when they were kids.'

'How come it takes them so long?' Holland said.

'Maybe it's the distance that makes them appreciate it. At the time, when they're kids, it can be a bit traumatic…'

Thorne thought about Mark and Sarah Foley. Anything they went through as foster children could not possibly have been more traumatic than what had happened before. 'What do you tell them?' he asked. 'These people that come looking.'

'Good luck.' She leaned back on her chair, took the material of her blouse between thumb and forefinger and pulled it from her skin. She flapped it back and forth, blew down on to her chest. 'We've got the records, but I couldn't really tell you where. Like I said, they should be over at County Hall, but laying your hands on them is another matter.'

Joanne Lesser smiled a nothing I can do smile and Thorne remembered a similar moment: he and Holland sitting in almost identical positions in Tracy Lenahan's office at Derby Prison. It seemed like a long time back. A few deaths ago…

Thorne rolled his head around on his neck. 'I know that we're talking about stuff that dates back a long way and you've made it clear that the system's not all it should be, but surely there's some sort of central storage place…?'

'Sorry, I thought I'd explained. We only have the active files because each time you move, each time the office relocates, you leave the dead files behind. Now, in theory, they should get taken back to County Hall and, like you say, stored somewhere. In reality, stuff just gets chucked in boxes. It goes missing…'

'Why would you move?'

'Council buildings are interchangeable. Somebody could decide tomorrow that this should be the new headquarters for the DSS or Refuse Collection. Unless the council renews the lease, this place might be a hotel in a couple of years.'

'Right. So, have you moved often?'

'I've only been doing this ten years and we've moved three – no, four – times since I started.' Thorne had to fight quite hard to stop himself swearing, or kicking a hole in the front of the desk. 'It gets worse. I know that some stuff got destroyed a couple of years ago when part of the archive was flooded…'