Mark Billingham: Lazybones

'He's certainly made a very good job of it.' Tracy Lenahan put down the letter, actually a photocopy of one of twenty-odd letters written to Douglas Remfry during his last three months inside, plus a couple to his home address after he'd been released. The letters that Holland had found under Remfry's bed.

Letters written by a Miler, pretending to be a twenty-eight-year-old woman named Jane Foley.

Thorne and Holland had already been taken through the procedure for the sorting of prisoners' mail. The letters – five sackfuls a day on average – would have been taken by two, perhaps three, Operational Support Grade officers to the Censor's room for sorting. The X-ray machine had been done away with by the present Governor, but drug dogs might be used and each letter would be slit open and searched for illegal enclosures. The OSG's did not read the letters, and providing there was no good reason, they would not usually be seen by anyone else.

'A good job of sounding like a woman, you mean?' Thorne asked. He thought the letters were pretty bloody convincing and so did Yvonne Kitson, but other opinions couldn't hurt.

"Oh yes! But I think he's being cleverer than that. I've seen one or two letters like this before, genuine letters. You'd be amazed how much mail like this people like Remfry really get. This has that same, odd tone to it. It's something slightly crazed…'

'Something a bit needy,' Holland suggested.

Lenahan nodded. 'Right, that's it. She's claiming to be a bit of a catch, a sexy bit of stuff looking for fun…'

'A sexy married bit of stuff,' Thorne added. The fictitious Jane Foley was conveniently hitched to an equally fictitious and awfully jealous husband, so Remfry couldn't write back to her. Lenahan read a few lines of the letter again, nodded. 'All the suggestive stuff in the letter is bang on, but there's still a kind of hopelessness. Something sad underneath…'

'Like she's a bit desperate,' Thorne said. 'A woman who's desperate enough to write these sorts of letters to a convicted rapist.'

Holland puffed out his cheeks. 'This is doing my head in. A bloke, pretending to be a woman, pretending to be a different kind of woman…

Lenahan pushed the letter back across her desk. 'It's subtle, though. Like I said, he's bloody clever.' She didn't need to tell Thorne that. He'd studied every one of 'Jane Foley's' letters. He knew that the man who wrote them was very clever indeed. Clever, calculating and extremely patient.

Lenahan picked up the photograph. 'And this is the icing on the cake…'

Thorne was struck by her strange choice of phrase, but said nothing. On the wall behind the desk was the regulation portrait of the Queen, looking rather as if she could smell something unpleasant wafting up from the canteen. To Her Majesty's left were a series of framed aerial views of the prison and, hung next to these very modern images, a pair of large landscapes in oil. Thorne knew next to bugger all about it but they looked pretty old. Lenahan glanced up, followed Thorne's gaze.

'Those have been knocking around the place since it opened in 1853,' she said. 'Used to be gathering dust down in Visits. Then six months ago, we had an inmate in for receiving stolen antiques. He took one look at them and went pale. Worth about twelve thousand each, so they reckon…'

She smiled and her eyes dropped to the black and white photo in her hand. Thorne's went to the silver picture frame on her desk. From where he was sitting he couldn't see the photo inside, but he imagined a fit-looking husband – army perhaps, or maybe even a copper – and a smiling, olive-skinned child. He looked again at the woman behind the desk, her dark eyes wide as she stared at the picture. She was ridiculously young, probably not even thirty. Her black hair was shoulder length. She was tall and large-breasted. It would have been clear to a blind man that the Deputy Governor would figure regularly in the fantasies of the men she locked up every night.

Thorne glanced across at Holland and was amused to see him struggling not to blush, as he waited for Tracy Lenahan to finish studying the photograph of 'Jane Foley'. The picture was of a woman kneeling, her head bowed and hooded, the artful lighting concealing much, but revealing tantalising glimpses of the full breasts, the nearly trimmed thatch of pubic hair. Of the leather belt around the wrists. Holland had earlier expressed surprise that the photos had not been confiscated, especially as Remfry was a sex-offender. Surely this kind of image was risky on 'Fraggle Rock' – the term used by many police officers for the Vulnerable Prisoners wing. Lenahan, bridling slightly at the slang, had explained what she called the Page Three rule. Stuff like this was discretionary. Obviously images of kids were not allowed on the VP wing, but if it was the sort of thing you might see on Page Three, then the OSG's would have a look, pass the odd comment and put it back in the envelope.

'Jesus,' Holland had said. 'Page Three must be going seriously fucking arty…'

Lenahan put the picture down, scraped at the edge of it with a long red fingernail.

'This is clever too. It's the ideal image to have chosen. Just what would be needed to hook an offender like Remfry, to tease him with the promise of something. This is a rapist's wet dream. Wherever your killer got it from, it's perfect.' She swallowed, cleared her throat.

'Remfry was a man who got off on submission…'

Thorne and Holland exchanged a glance. They hadn't told Tracy Lenahan, but they were pretty sure the picture wasn't one the killer had just gone out and bought. The naked woman was wearing a hood identical to the one that Phil Hendricks had taken off Douglas Remfry's body…

'There's half a dozen similar pictures,' Thorne said. 'They were sent with the most recent letters. They start to get more revealing the closer the letters get to his release date.'

Lenahan nodded. 'Increasing the excitement…'

'By the time he got out he must have been gagging for it,' Holland said.

She picked up the photograph again in her left hand and reached for the letter with her right. She brandished them both. 'Your killer is sensitive to the way this kind of woman might think, and to what will best stimulate the man she's writing to.'

Thorne said nothing. He was thinking that she sounded bizarrely impressed.

'Sensitive, like a gay man maybe,' Holland said. Thorne shrugged non-committally. They were back to that. He had to agree it was possible, but he was growing irritated at the way the investigation was fixing on what they presumed the killer's sexuality to be. Yes, the violent sodomising of the victim was clearly significant. The rapist had been raped and Thorne was sure that this would prove to be crucial in finding out why he'd been murdered. Thorne was less sure that who the killer chose to sleep with was as important.

Holland slid forward in his chair, looked at Tracy Lenahan. 'This is an angle we obviously have to consider – that Remfry was killed by someone he'd known in prison. Someone with whom he'd possibly had a non-consensual sexual relationship…'

Lenahan looked back at him, waiting for the question, not appearing terribly keen to do Holland any favours. Is that possible, do you think? Could Remfry have sexually assaulted another prisoner? Could he have been sexually assaulted himself?.'

The Deputy Governor leaned back, something dark passing momentarily across her face. It vanished as she clasped her hands together and shook her head. Thorne thought that the laugh she produced sounded a little forced. '

'I think you've been watching too many films set in American prisons, Detective Constable. There're some very nasty pieces of work in here, don't get me wrong, but very few of them are called Bubba, and if you're looking for bitches or puppies, you should look in a dogs' home. Prisoners form relationships, of course they do, but as far as I know, nobody's going to get gangbanged if they drop the soap in the shower.'