Mark Billingham - Lazybones

Then, looking across the' road, he saw the motorbike…

'Dave…?'

Holland felt the engine that was ticking over within him moving up a gear. 'Listen, Phil, before you leave, get on the phone. Call Brigstocke and fill him in. Get some back-up round here, now. And an ambulance…'

'What are you going to do?'

Holland was walking along the pavement, away from Thorne's place. He was thinking about the alleyway that he remembered running along the side of a house three or four doors up. 'I'm not sure…'

He was seeing a face through a crash helmet. Seeing the face of a killer, smiling at the lie within the truth.

'I've got a BMW myself…'

Smiling, because BMW make bikes as well as cars…

'Why don't you just get out now while you still can?' Thorne said.

'You'll spend the rest of your lives in prison. You'll never see each other again…'

Jameson sounded unconcerned. 'Don't get worked up. Whoever that was at your door, they've gone.'

Thorne twisted his head, aimed his voice towards Eve. 'People know you were coming over here, for fuck's sake. There'll be fibres, bits of skin everywhere. In the bed…'

'Of course there will,' Eve said. 'I'm your girlfriend. Which is why I'll be the one calling the police.'

Thorne was stunned, but he saw immediately that they would get away with it. It was very simple. With Thorne dead, Jameson would kiss his sister goodbye for a while and slip away. On his way out, he would kick in the door that she'd previously left open for him, make sure there Were signs of a forced entry.

Then she would dial 999…

He had no doubt that Eve would play the part of the traumatised witness and, later, the grieving girlfriend perfectly. He knew all too well how good she was, how convincingly she would pick up the pieces of her life. He could see the officers falling a little bit in love with her as they took her shocking statement.

The idea that they would not be made to pay for his death caused a surge of fury to rush through Thorne. He did not need it, but he felt a jolt of added determination to cling on fiercely to every second.

'Tell me about the lightning, Eve.'

She said nothing, but Jameson took the bait. 'Franklin was always going to pay for what he did. It just took me a while to get round to it…'

Jameson had moved to stand between Thorne and the door. Eve had crossed back to the bed. He presumed that Jameson was still holding the hood, and the washing line, but he could not be certain. Thorne guessed that Roger Noble had been fortunate dropping dead when he did. Something in Jameson's voice suggested that, had he still been alive, Jameson would have 'got round' to him as well…

'So why not leave it there?' Thorne asked.

'We did,' Eve said. 'Carried on with the lives we'd made, that we'd remade, for ourselves, until I had one too many slow dances at a party. Until some piece of shit thought that "no" meant "yes", and followed me home…'

Face down on the carpet, Thorne knew full well the expression on her face. He'd seen it before, the night they'd walked across London Fields and he'd told her about the case. Told her things she already knew far better than he did…

'Just think of this bloke as cutting re-offending rates…'

'It would be stupid to ask if you reported the rape to the police,'

Thorne said.

Jameson took a step towards him, his black boots moving into Thorne's field of vision. 'Very fucking stupid. We dealt with that one ourselves…'

Thorne remembered the other case Holland and Stone had pulled off CRIMINT. A man found raped and strangled in the boot of a car.

The ligature had been removed, but Thorne could now be pretty certain that it had been washing line.

He'd solved another murder in the last few moments before his own o..

'Which all brings us bang up to date,' Jameson said. To me, Thorne thought. He knew he was the last in a line of dead men, connected by the strongest, strangest thread of all. The family tie which refused to break, even when it had become twisted beyond all recognition.

'You kill the man you blame for the death of your mother and father, and for your abuse at the hands of the foster parent who replaces them. You kill the man who attacked your sister. You develop a taste for it…'

'Not a taste for killing, no.'

'My mistake. A taste for some perverted idea of justice…'

'Listen to yourself…'

'Tell me you don't enjoy it…'

Eve's voice was flat, barely above a whisper. 'I want to do this, now,' she said.

Thorne could feel her walking towards him. At the same time Jameson moved quickly, one step bringing him next to Thorne, another lifting a boot up and across Thorne's back, until he was straddling him.

Thorne knew what was coming, but refused to submit to it. He reacted instinctively, thrusting his legs backwards and pushing his groin down towards the carpet. Hands grabbed his legs, clawed at his thighs as they struggled to lift them, fought to bring his rear end upright, to make it accessible…

Pain and numbness had left the top half of Thorne's body as good as useless. It was no more than a dead thing, with only the dark mass that clung to his ribs still flourishing. Swinging inside him, wet and weighty, clattering off the wall of his chest as he kicked and thrashed.

'Stop it,' Jameson said.

Thorne cried out, the terror suddenly far greater than the rage. His voice sounded high and weak, and was quickly replaced by the deafening roar and squeal of agony as Jameson's gloved fist pounded into the side of his head, again and again, until Thorne could do nothing but let go, and be still, and wait for it to stop. Seconds stretched and passed, and though Thorne had lost track of who was where, he was aware of movement, of arms and legs, of pressure…

He was aware of Eve's voice as the scream in his head died down a little, and he heard her saying, 'Hold him.'

He was aware that he had started to cry, and was grateful that he hadn't lost control of bladder or bowels.

Thorne raised his head an inch off the floor. The wetness slipped beneath his chin and into the gash, stinging. 'One thing,' he said, looking for Jameson, his voice somewhere between a gasp and a rattle, 'just for my own satisfaction. Are you going to rape me before or after I'm dead? We never could work that out…'

Jameson was sitting across the top of Thorne's back. He leaned down close to his ear. 'Ding, ding. Stupid again. I've never raped anyone…

Thorne felt his head being lifted up by the hair and twisted around. He quickly forgot about the searing pain in his neck and shoulders when he saw what Eve was holding. It was dull, and dark, and thick as his fist. A warped simulation of a sex-organ, designed only for the pleasure of one who sought to invade and to injure:

A weapon, pure and simple.

'No need to bother with the condom, this time,' Eve said. Thorne thought about the traces found at the first post-mortem. The natural assumption that the victim had been penetrated by flesh and blood. That the rapist wore a condom. That the rapist was a man…

In wholly different circumstances, Thorne might even have laughed, but he knew very well what the thing Eve held in her hand would do, condom or not, when she rammed it into him…

'To answer your question though,' Jameson said, 'we find that doing both things at the same time works pretty well for us.'

Holland thought he heard a cry as he dropped down on to the kitchen floor. He froze, listening. There was music playing in the living room. Thorne's usual country crap. From somewhere, there was a series of dull thuds, and then silence.

He moved slowly and quietly through into the living room, in much the same way as the burglar who'd come in through the same window six weeks earlier. From the table on the far side of the room a red light caught his eye, flashing from the handset that had been taken off the hook. Thorne's mobile was next to it. Holland didn't need to go any closer to know that it had been switched off… '