Mark Billingham: Lazybones

He was looking at pictures of people he recognised.

Thorne lay in bed, listening hard, trying to ascertain exactly what might be happening from the sounds he could hear coming from doe bathroom…,

For the want of anything more original to say, he'd offered Eve a coffee as soon as they'd got back to the flat, hoping she'd turn it down and delighted when she did. She'd gone to the toilet then, and he'd moved around the flat, opening windows, grinning at himself in the mirror like a schoolboy, as he passed the mantelpiece on the way to the stereo. With the first few bars of 'Good Year for the Roses' filling the room, Thorne had turned to find her standing only inches away… They'd half danced, half stumbled through to the bedroom, and collapsed on to the new" mattress. The laughter gave way quickly to more passionate noises as their hands and mouths went to work on each other, the wine and the wait making their movements hungrier, more desperate than they'd been earlier, before they'd left for the restaurant…

Then suddenly, Eve had stopped, and begun to laugh again. She'd pushed herself off the bed, grinned, and announced that she needed another visit to the bathroom. As soon as she'd closed the door behind her, Thorne had stripped quickly and slid beneath the duvet, grateful to have avoided that awkward moment when the love-handles were revealed, but feeling, all the same, that a certain spontaneity had gone…

Now, he could hear nothing through the wall between bedroom and bathroom. Thinking about it, the impetus might have been lost, but no more so than it would have been when the moment came for him to fiddle clumsily around with a condom. He thought about the packet he'd bought the day before, from the machine in the toilets at the Royal Oak. It lay, nestled in the drawer of his bedside cabinet, alongside the athlete's foot cream and indigestion tablets. He decided that it might save time and trouble if he took a condom out of the packet and laid it ready. As he reached across to open the drawer, a thought struck him. Perhaps she was in the bathroom, riddling clumsily around with a diaphragm…

Thorne heard water running. He sat up a little higher in bed, leaned his head back against the wall and turned his ear to it. She was probably brushing her 'teeth…

He wondered whether he should slip out of bed, put on his dressing gown and join her. How would it feel if her teeth were clean, while his mouth still tasted of curry? Would it seem strange, the two of them spitting into the sink together before they'd so much as felt each other up?

The door opened, and Eve walked back in. She stopped next to the bed and looked down at him. Her clothes were straightened and smooth, as though it were already the following morning and she had come to kiss him goodbye. She looked sexier than anything he could remember, looked as if she found him more attractive than ever, and yet, for a second, Thorne wondered if she was about to turn and leave. Before he could say anything, she laid her handbag gently down by the side of the bed, took a step back, and began to undress.

The home number was engaged, so Holland tried Thorne's mobile. The phone sat on a table in a tiny alcove beneath the stairs, where Holland fought for space with coats, umbrellas and plastic bags filled with boots and shoes.

Irene Noble hovered behind him. 'Who are you calling? Are you allowed to tell me?'

'Detective Inspector Thorne. You met him the other day…'

'Oh yes. Perhaps he's got a mobile.'

'I'm trying it now…' Holland turned away, suddenly uncomfortable with her so close. In his hurry to make the call, to pass on what he'd discovered, it hadn't occurred to him that he should really be doing it privately. He'd been relaxed, enjoying himself. Now he was on duty again, and he knew there were things he had to tell Thorne which Irene Noble shouldn't hear. 'I'm sorry, but you'll have to…'

Holland heard Thorne's voice telling him how sorry he was that he couldn't talk to him, asking him to leave a message. Holland pressed a button to end the call. This was a message that he wanted to deliver personally.

Still clutching the photographs of Mark and Sarah Foley, Holland was out of there in less than a minute.

He thanked Irene Noble as he backed away down the path towards his car, all the time wondering if there was a quicker way back towards north London, telling himself that there was no need to go mad, that their suspects had no way of knowing they'd been identified and would not be going anywhere.

The last thing Holland told Irene Noble, shouting through his open window just before he pulled away, was that he'd take good care of her photos. In truth, he didn't know when she was likely to see them again. Holland would show them to Thorne. He would show them to Brigstocke. They would use them to secure a warrant… Holland could not know for sure how it would proceed from there, what the timescale would be, how much would be passed on to the media. Every case ended differently. Still, there was a chance, if they wanted to stem the flow of damaging publicity, and made the arrests over the weekend, that the next time Irene Noble saw the pictures would be on the front pages of the papers on Monday morning.

'You're gorgeous,' Thorne said, staring down, wanting her. 'I can't believe it's taken so bloody long to get here.'

'Whose fault is that?'

'Mine, I know.'

'Glad you're here now though?'

'God, yeah.' Thorne grinned. 'I'm thinking about what would have happened if I hadn't answered the phone in that hotel room, when we found the first body. You might have called an hour later. It could easily have been somebody else who answered that phone…'

She shrugged. 'Then it could very easily have been somebody else who was here now.'

Her body felt warm and smooth against his. He was sure, rusty and as inept a reader of signs as he was, that he saw desire in her eyes. Yet a minute before, when he'd placed a hand for the first time against the naked flesh of her breast, he'd felt a tension. There was a reserve suddenly, which seemed slightly at odds with what Thorne had been led to expect. She'd made all the running, cracked those dirty jokes about the bed, about being up for it. Now, at the last moment, she was revealing herself to be not quite as forward as she pretended to be. Thorne felt a barrier go up. Fragile and perhaps only a touch away from collapse, and unbearably sexy…

She wanted him to do the work, to be a man. It was as though she longed to submit to him, to herself, but needed a little help. Thorne was massively excited. He could sense what might be waiting, if she allowed herself to go over the edge. More than anything, he wanted to nudge her towards it…

'You're so gorgeous,' he said, and dropped his mouth down on to hers.

As if on cue, Thorne could hear a song beginning in the other room. This was the one he'd thought would be so perfect. The story of a man whose love for a woman only ended on the day they carried him out of his front door in a box. Thorne let the familiar richness of George Jones's voice roll over him, as he ran his hands across Eve's body.

He was dimly aware of another familiar sound. The bedroom door creaked open, hissing as it moved across the carpet. It was a noise which often disturbed him in the early hours, and one which, tonight of all nights, he could well do without.

Thorne stopped what he was doing and smiled at Eve, waiting to feel the unwelcome weight of the cat landing on the end of the bed…

Holland took the Romford Road as far as Forest Gate, then cut over towards Wanstead Flats. This was not an area of London he knew well. With one hand on the steering wheel and the other holding open the A-Z, he was making up his route as he went. ',,