Mark Billingham - Lazybones

He slid out of the booth, grabbed his paper, and strolled across to the counter to pay for his lunch.

He thought about his nephew and his niece and hoped that they were together somewhere a long way away. A place where nobody could ever find them and fuck their new lives up. The afternoon stretched ahead. He would go back and lie down and wait for it to get dark. Then he would put some metal on, and drink. He would empty can after can, until the noise inside his head was quieter than the screech and the smash of the music that would be filling his bedroom.

When they got back to Becke House, Thorne filled Kitson and Brigstocke in on how things had gone in Colchester. They conferred about progress on the other flank of the operation. The Southern killing had plenty in common with those that had gone before: the cause of death; the layout of the murder scene; the wreath ordered in person from an out-of-hours floristry service – this time delivered as far as the hotel-room doorway, then hurriedly dropped after one look at the state of its recipient.

But there were plenty of differences too. There were new avenues which had to be explored…

Southern had been released from prison more than ten years previously. He hadn't been selected in the same way as the previous victims, and he was certainly approached differently. Unlike Remfry or Welch, he had a whole life that had to be sifted through if they were going to find out just how the Miler had made himself part of it. Interviews, running into many hundreds, were still being conducted with anyone who had contact with Southern: the people he worked with; the friends he drank with; the members of the gym he worked out at; the girlfriend he'd recently broken up with…

These people who had been part of his new life, would, for the most part, have had no idea that Howard Southern had once served time in prison. Even if he'd told any of them – and with some people it might have gained him kudos, or a round of drinks – chances are he wouldn't have told them what for.

Unfortunately for him, someone had found out exactly what Howard Southern had once done, and had killed him for it. In his Office, Thorne went through his mail. As always, it was mostly junk. Pointless memos, press releases, crime statistics, new initiative outlines. He glanced through the monthly Police Federation newsletter, at a story about a local force recording themselves whistling the theme tunes to a host of well-known police TV shows. These recordings were being broadcast in some of the rougher estates and shopping centres in an effort to deter street criminals. When Thorne had finished laughing, he checked his messages. There'd already been a call from Joanne Lesser to say that she'd start checking the records the following morning, and that some files had apparently been moved from County Hall to a new storage facility on an industrial estate just outside Chelmsford. The next one was from Chris Barratt at Kentish Town. There was nothing from Eve… Thorne picked up the phone, wondering at the sharp twinge of disappointment he felt. He marveled, as he dialed, at his seemingly endless capacity for indecision, for fucking about…

'About bloody time too,' he said.

'Calm down,' Barratt said. 'We haven't got him yet. But we know exactly who he is. We'll pull him first thing tomorrow morning.'

'How did you find him?'

'Are you listening? This is funny as fuck…'

'Go on…'

'He'd got rid of the stereo, right? Probably shifted it the same day, got himself off his tits on the proceeds. Then, he has a problem…'

'Which is?'

'Your taste in music.'

'Eh?'

'The poor sod's had to make himself a bit conspicuous in the end. We got the nod eventually because by all accounts he's spent the last four weeks trying to get rid of your bloody CD collection.'

'What?' Thorne's relief was all but cancelled out by his outrage… By now, Barratt was making no attempt to hide his enjoyment.

'Couldn't pay anybody to take 'em off his hands, by all accounts. Been dragging them round every market and second-hand place in London…'

'Enjoy yourself, Chris. As long as I get them all back.'

'Listen, if I was you, when you do get them back, why don't you stick a few by the window, where people can see them. You know, as a deterrent…'

'I'm not listening. Just call me when you've nicked him, all right?'

'Fine…'

'And I'll want five minutes.'

'No problem. I'm here all day…'

'Not with you, smartarse. With him…'

He'd seen comedians on TV talking about how women could hold a hundred thoughts in their heads at one time and juggle an assortment of tasks, while men were incapable of doing even two things at once. Wanking and maneuvering a mouge was about as much as a man could manage.

Even though he knew it was nonsense, he still found the joke funny. Even as he sat working and planning the next killing… Multi-tasking was something of a specialty, had to be, and even though the slightly more socially unacceptable stuff he did was the more exciting, he actually enjoyed the day job too. He took pride in what he did. Of course, he couldn't have done the other things without it.

The next killing…

He didn't know for certain yet if the next would also be the last, but in a lot of ways it made sense. It would round things off very nicely. This one would be different in many ways of course, more symbolic than the others, but certainly no less enjoyable for it. A date had yet to be set, but that was the final detail. The victim had been selected weeks ago. In fact, he'd pretty much selected himself.

Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time… Thorne thought about the Restorative Justice Conference he'd sat through weeks earlier. He remembered Darren Ellis and the squeak of his shiny, white training shoes. He pictured the face of the old man who'd been sitting more or less where he was now… Opposite him, in the Interview Room at Kentish Town station, sat a boy who Thorne knew to be seventeen, but, apart from the unexcited eyes, the rest of him might have belonged to any skinny-arsed fourth-former. Noel Mullen was stealing cars to order while others his age had been nicking pens and pick 'n' mix from Woolworth's. By the time his contemporaries were sneaking into pubs and feeling up girls, Noel had already acquired a decent-sized drugs habit and a growing reputation with the police in North-west London. There was a room that should have had his name on the door, in the young offenders' institute that at one time had welcomed both his elder brothers. " He still looked as if his mum should be washing his underpants and pouring the milk on his Rice Krispies…

'Why did you shit in my bed?' Thorne said.

The boy did a pretty good job of looking unutterably bored, but there was a jerkiness to the seemingly casual roll of the head, a tremor at the ends of the fingers. Thorne wondered how long it had been since he'd had a fix. Maybe not since he'd failed to sell Thorne's CDs, to turn Cash into cash and score with it…

'Come on, Noel…'

'What's the fucking point? You going to put in a good word for me, are you? Speak up for me in court?'

'No chance.'

'So why should I bother talking to you?'

Thorne leaned back and folded his arms. 'Listen, break into places,

Noel, by all means. It's your job, after all. Break in and trash them a bit if you have to, while you're looking for the decent stuff, the gear that's going to score you the best deal. I can understand that, I really can.

'Not just the posh places, either. Don't just do the rich bastards who you might, might have a legitimate reason to enjoy turning over. No, why not rob from your own? Dump on your doorstep. Do the ordinary, working idiots who live on your own estate, on the poxy estate that you've already done your best to make that little bit worse than it would have been anyway, by pissing in the lift and leaving dirty needles all over what passes for a playground. Smash your neighbour's door in and see how high a black and white TV can get you. Or some cheap jewellery. Fuck it, any good stuff, the widescreens and the DVDs, will have been rented anyway, so who cares? Stupid fuckers aren't insured, that's not your fault, is it…?'