Mark Billingham: Lazybones

As Irene Noble started to speak, pulling her feet up on to the sofa like a teenager, Holland watched her face shift and settle, until every one of her years was clearly visible on it.

'Whatever problems you have, I hope you work them out together, all three of you. But they won't be in the same league as some of the things that kids have brought with them through my front door. You pass them on, you know. Hand them down, like baldness or diabetes or the colour of your eyes…'

'You're talking about Mark and Sarah…'

'The other day I was very harsh about the two sets of caters who had the children before we did. About their inability to cope. The truth is that we weren't really coping any better than they had.'

'You adopted them.'

'I think it was our last effort at making them feel part of something bigger. Two parents and two children. We wanted them to come out of themselves, to engage with the rest of the world a bit more.'

'It's understandable though,' Holland said. 'That they'd be tight knit. That the two of them would be very close, after what happened.'

He looked away from her, down to the floor, thinking, And what was still happening…

'They were too close,' she said. 'That was the problem. When they disappeared, Sarah was pregnant, and the baby she was carrying was Mark's.'

They walked slowly back down Kentish Town Road towards Thorne's flat. At not much after nine o'clock, it was just starting to darken but was still warm enough to walk without a jacket. The road was as busy and noisy as ever. Cars moved past them constantly, those which could had their tops down, most had sidelights on. Despite what Eve had said earlier, they had both tucked a fair amount of food away, though Thorne put the feeling in his stomach down to something else entirely. Before they'd left the flat, Eve had helped him make the bed, laying a clean white sheet across the new mattress she'd brought with her. Thorne knew very well that when they got back there, she was going to help him unmake it again.

There were some things in his life which he counted as certainties: there was always another body, somewhere; you could never get rid of blood completely; people who killed without motive tended to do it again. But this was the sort of promise that Thorne hadn't been on for a very long time…

Eve grabbed his hand suddenly, and raised it up, bringing their bare forearms together. 'You'd look a lot better with a decent tan,' she said.

'Is that an invitation?'

'When was the last time you had a proper holiday?'

Even after thinking about it for a minute, Thorne couldn't provide anything as specific as a year. Lack of time was not so much the problem as lack of inclination and anybody to go away with. 'It's been a while,' he said.

'Are you a lying-on-the-beach kind of guy, or do you prefer to do stuff?.'

'Both, really. Or neither. I think lying on the beach gets a bit boring, but probably-not quite as boring as walking round a museum…'

'Not easily pleased, are you?'

'Sorry…'

'All right, where would you like to go, if you could go anywhere?'

'I've always fancied Nashville.'

She nodded. 'Right. The country-and-western thing…'

'Another one of my dark secrets…'

'I quite liked it.'

'Really?'

'You're not going to get kinky later on though, are you? Dress up in leather chaps? Bring out the bullwhip and spurs…?'

They turned right on to Prince of Wales Road, the sound of live jazz coming from the Pizza Express on the corner. Thorne wondered if a pizza might not have been a better idea. The combination of curry and humidity meant that beads of perspiration were popping all over him.

Still hand in hand, Thorne could feel the moisture between their palms. He wasn't sure whether it was her sweat or his own. The bike weaved effortlessly through the traffic. Occasionally, where it got really heavy, or the road narrowed, he would have to sit and wait.

Idling, in line among the dispatch riders and trainee cabbies on mopeds. Soon enough, there would be a gap and he would be away, the rucksack bouncing against his back as he drove across sleeping policemen and holes in the road…

He pulled up at traffic lights and checked his watch. He was probably going to get there a bit early, but it wouldn't matter. He would park up, stroll off somewhere and wait. Keeping out of sight, until it was time.

Next to him, a big Kawasaki revved up, ready for the off. A girl in cut-off jeans rode pillion, squeezing her boyfriend tighter with each growl he twisted from the engine. On amber, the Jap bike was gone, and he watched it go, easing his own machine slowly away from the lights.

Picking up no more speed than was necessary… He had plenty of time, and the last thing he wanted was to be pulled over.

It wasn't so much a question of the ticket, or the points on his licence. He was so excited, so full of what he was about to do, that were some copper to pull him over and risk where he was going, he might just have to tell him.

Holland looked at his watch and was gobsmacked to see that he'd been there for an hour and a half.

'I need to be getting back,' he said. 'Could I have those photographs?'

Irene Noble climbed a little wearily from the sofa, slipped her shoes back on. I'll go and fetch them…'

While he was waiting, Holland sat, going over their conversation and marveling at the capacity people had for self-deception. Irene Noble was far from being a stupid woman. He found it hard to understand why, even though she claimed that they, and previous carers, had caught the children in bed together, she had so readily presumed that Sarah Foley had been made pregnant by her brother. Had no other explanation occurred to her?

He heard her coming down the stairs, shouting to him. 'It doesn't seem five minutes since these were taken.'

Probably no other explanation she could live with… She walked into the room holding out a small bundle of photos, half a dozen polaroids and a couple of slightly bigger standard prints. Holland took them from her. She stepped back and perched on the arm of the sofa, pointing to the pictures as he began to look through them.

'Those are the two I had in frames on the sideboard. They're the ones that were taken at school the year before they disappeared. The others are from a birthday party we had for Sarah. Her eleventh, it would have been. Roger had just bought this instant camera…'

From the moment he'd looked down at the first photograph, Holland had stopped hearing anything but the sound of his own breathing. A girl in a blue-patterned dress, her hair tied back, smiling as though at something only she found funny. Holland lifted the picture of Sarah up, revealing its companion, the portrait of he brother.

'Jesus,' he said.

Irene stood up. 'What's the matter?'

Holland flicked through the other photos to make sure, stopping at one in particular and staring at it, elated and terrified. He couldn't hear as Irene Noble continued to ask him what was wrong, didn't see her moving across the room towards him.

Sarah Foley sat at the table, the knife in her hand poised above a cake, the girls either side of her looking far more excited than she did. Just visible in the top right of the picture, Mark stood in the corner of the room. His fingers were curled around the edge of the door, as if he were preparing to throw it open and run through it, or else push away from it, launching himself towards the camera, and Whoever lay beyond it.

Her face was thinner then, and his perhaps a little fuller. The eyes were wider and the skin smoother, but that was understandable. These were the faces of children, which had yet to weather, but Holland was familiar with their expressions.