Mark Billingham: Lazybones

'So,' Brigstocke said, 'we've got everybody out chasing down all the likely relatives of Remfry's victims. Still favourite with everybody?'

Nods around the table.

'A long way from odds-on, though,' Thorne said. There were things which bothered him, which didn't quite mesh with the vengeful relative scenario. He couldn't picture an anger carried around for that many years, fermenting into something lethal, corrosive, then manifesting itself in the way it had in that hotel room. There was something almost stage-managed about what he had seen on that filthy mattress. Posed, Hendricks had said.

And he was still troubled by the early morning call to the florist… Thorne thought there was something odd about the message. He couldn't believe that it was simple carelessness, so the only conclusion was that the killer must have wanted the police to hear his voice on that answering machine. It was as if he were introducing himself.

'What came up at the briefing,' Kitson said, 'the stuff about Remfry turning queer inside? Worth looking into…?'

Thorne glanced towards Hendricks. A gay man who was choosing to ignore the word Kitson had used, or else genuinely didn't give a fuck.

'Yeah,' Thorne said. 'Whatever he might or might not have got up to when he was inside, he was definitely straight before he went in. Don't forget that he raped three women…'

'Rape's not about sex, it's about power,' Kitson said. Yvonne Kitson, together with DC Andy Stone, had come into the team to replace an officer Thorne had lost, in circumstances he tried every day to forget. Of all the murderers he'd put away, Thorne was happy to remember that the man responsible was serving three life sentences in Belmarsh Prison.

Thorne looked at Phil Hendricks. 'Never mind Remfry, can we be certain the killer's gay?'

Hendricks didn't hesitate. 'Absolutely not. Like Yvonne says, the tape's got nothing to do with sex, anyway. Maybe the killer wants us to think he's gay. He may well be, of course, but we have to consider other possibilities…'

'Whether it was a gay thing or not,' Kitson said, 'he could still have been set up by someone he did time with, someone with a major grudge…'

Brigstocke cleared his throat, at some level finding this all a bit embarrassing. 'But the buggery…?'

Hendricks snorted. 'Buggery?' He dropped his Mancunian accent and adopted the posh bluster of the gentleman's club. 'Buggery!!'

Brigstocke reddened. 'Sodomy, then. Anal intercourse, whatever. How could you do that if you weren't homosexual?'

Hendricks shrugged. 'Close your eyes and think of Claudia Schiffer…?'

'Kylie for me,' Thorne said.

Kitson shook her head, smiling. 'Dirty old man.'

Brigstocke was unconvinced. He stared hard at Thorne. 'Seriously, though, Tom. This might be important. Could you?'

'It would depend how much I wanted to kill somebody,' Thorne said.

There was a silence around the table for a while. Thorne decided to break it before it became too serious. 'Remfry went to that hotel willingly. He booked the room himself. He knew, or thought he knew, what he was getting into.'

'And whatever it was,' Hendricks added, 'it looks as though he went along with it for a while.'

'Right,' Kitson said. She turned the photocopied pages of Hendricks's post-mortem report. 'No defence wounds, no tissue underneath the fingernails…'

The phone on the desk' rang. Thorne was nearest.

'DI Thorne. Yes, Dave…'

The others watched for a few seconds as Thorne listened. Brigstocke hissed at Kitson. 'Why the fuck did Remfry go to that hotel?'

Thorne nodded, grunted, took the top off a pen with his teeth. He took it out of his mouth, put it back on the pen. He smiled, told Holland to get his arse in gear and ended the call. Then he answered Brigstocke's question.

4 DECEMBER, 1975

They sat in the Maxi, outside the house.

She'd held it together all morning, through all the really hard parts, the personal stuff the intrusion. Then, when it seemed the worst was over, she'd begun to wail as she'd stepped through the doors he'd held open for her. Out of the police station and running down the steps towards the street, her heels noisy on the concrete, her sobbing uncontrollable. In the car on the way back, the crying had gradually given way to a seething fury which exploded in fitful bursts of abuse. He kept his hands clenched tightly around the steering wheel as she rained blows down on his shoulder and arm. His eyes never left the road as she screamed words at him that he'd never heard her utter before. He drove carefully, with the same caution he always showed, and as he manoeuvred the car through the lunchtime traffic on the icy streets, he absorbed as much of her pain and rage as he could take.

They sat in the car, both too shattered to open a door. Staring straight ahead, afraid to so much as look towards the house. The house, which was now simply the place where, the night before, she had told him what had happened. The collection of rooms through which they'd staggered and shouted and wept. The place where everything had changed. The home they'd never feel comfortable in again. Without turning her head, she spat words at him. 'Why didn't you make me go to the police station last night? Why did you let me wait?'

The engine was turned off the car was still, but his hands would not leave the steering wheel. His leather driving gloves creaked as he grasped it even tighter. "You wouldn't listen, you wouldn't listen to sense:

"What do you expect? Christ, I didn't even know my own name. I had no idea what I was fucking doing. I would never have had the shower…'

She'd been too upset to think clearly, of course. He'd tried to explain all this to the WPC that morning, but she'd just shrugged and looked at her colleague and carried on taking the clothes and putting them into a plastic bag 'as they were taken off and handed over.

'You shouldn't have had a shower, love,' the WPC said. 'That was a bit silly. You should have come straight in, last night, as soon as it had happened…'

The engine had been off for no more than a minute, but already it was freezing inside the car. The tears felt warm as they inched slowly down his face, running into his moustache. 'You said you'd wanted to wash… to wash him off you. I said I understood but I told you, you shouldn't have.

That it wasn't a good idea. You weren't listening to me…'

Standing there in the lounge after she'd told him. The horrible minutes and hours after she'd described what had been done to her. She wouldn't let him do a lot of things. She wouldn't let him hold her. She wouldn't let him ring anybody. She wouldn't let him go round to the bastard's house to kick what little he had between his legs into a bloody mush and punch him into the middle of next week.

He looked at his watch. He wondered if the police would pick Franklin up at work or later on at his house…

He needed to call the office and tell them he wouldn't be in. He needed to call the school to check that everything was OK, that the previous night's explanations for why Mummy was so upset had been believed…

'What did that woman mean?' she said, suddenly. 'That WPC? When she asked if I always wore a dress that nice to go to work?' She slid her hands beneath her legs and began to rock gently in her seat. Snow was starting to fall quite heavily, building up quickly on the bonnet and windscreen. He didn't bother to turn on the wipers.

Later, when they talked about it, both Thorne and Holland admitted to fancying the Deputy Governor of Derby Prison. What neither of them quite got round to admitting was that, attractive as she undoubtedly was, they actually fancied her more because she was a prison governor.

They didn't really go into it all that much…