Mark Billingham - Scaredy cat

'Should we wait for him?'

'Probably,' Thorne said, and opened the door. In the couple of seconds he spent marching across to the tape recorder on the far side of the room, he took it all in. The uniform in the corner, jumping slightly as Thorne slammed the door. The cold. Palmer, his white collar grubby, sitting at the brushed metal table, head bowed. The wad of bandage clumsily plastered to the top of his head, the blood dried brown.

Thorne picked up two fresh cassette tapes and began tearing roughly at the plastic packaging, his eyes never leaving the figure seated at the table.

Palmer was a big man, that was obvious, slumped and hunched over as he was. Wispy, sandy-coloured hair and metal-framed glasses. Murrell and Knight had done a good job. The picture was spot on.

'I'm Detective Inspector Thorne and I'm in no mood to piss about, is that all right with you?'

Palmer said nothing. He didn't even move.

Thorne slammed the tapes into the recorder, hit the red button and waited. Once the buzzing had stopped and the recording had begun, he cautioned his interviewee. He spoke the caution quickly, spitting out the words like pips from something gone sour. He told Palmer he was free to leave, that he was not under arrest, that he was entitled to free and independent legal advice. He said these things because he had to, without thinking about them, or caring a great deal. The only moment of hesitation came when he looked across at the uniformed statue in the corner, to ascertain his name for the tape. The constable's eyes widened and he spoke his name as if he was confirming it from the dock.

Thorne stood opposite Palmer, his hands on the dull metal tabletop, staring hard. He was aware of Constable Stephen Legge in the corner, shifting his feet nervously. Good, Thorne thought. I'm scaring you, I must be scaring this fucker…

Palmer didn't look up.

'Now then, these two murders you're so courageously putting your hand up to. That's two murders out of four, if we're being accurate, isn't it? Four murders all told. There's another man, isn't there?'

Nothing. Thorne let a few seconds become thirty. Moved in that bit closer.

'Actually, we'd better make that five murders. You fucked up last night, fucked up or bottled out, doesn't matter which, but I'm bloody sure he didn't.' Slowly, asking it again, 'There's another man, isn't there?'

Palmer nodded. Sniffed. He was about to cry.

'Who is he?' Casual. Like asking the time. Just give me a name… Thorne moved round the table, stood behind him. Only a cliche because it was true, because it worked. Leaning down, close enough to smell the sweat, to see the first, fat teardrop plop onto the fag-browned table edge.

'There's a woman's body… somewhere. At the moment, she's only missing. I'm not sure it's even been reported yet, but people are missing her. There's people somewhere who are starting to feel it in their guts about now, just starting to feel it. That flutter of worry, turning to concern and then eventually to panic. That's when it really starts to hurt, like a cramp that's squeezing the inside of them, making it hard to breathe. Crushing the pipes and valves, there, in the gut. All of them, all those people, friends and relatives, huddling together because they all feel the same, and all of them feeling like parts of them are starting to shut down bit by bit. To stop working. Feeling as bad as anyone could ever feel, ever…'

Palmer's head drooped slowly down until his cheek lay flush on the table. There were still tears, pooling beneath the side of his face, but no sound at all.

Thorne's voice got lower, quieter. 'But it isn't. It isn't as bad. It's nothing like. When their missing wife or daughter or mother becomes their dead wife or daughter or mother, that's when the real pain begins.

'Hearing the news, there's a hammer blow to the skull, and the blows don't stop coming. Identifying the body. Waiting while it's stared at and quantified and filleted. The funeral to arrange, the loose ends, the belongings to sort through. The clothes to bag up for Oxfam. To bundle up and bury your face in…

'The lives that have got to be carried on with, while the pain settles, inside and out. A scalding in the belly, a scab to be picked at. Rage and guilt. That's agony a long way beyond the physical, Martin.

'That's not better in the morning, or in a week's time or a month's. That's terminal…'

Everybody and everything perfectly still. The room, freezing but suddenly airless. Finally the question, on a slow, shallow breath.

'What's his name?'

Thorne actually flinched, as Palmer raised his head with surprising speed. His eyes were red-rimmed beneath the thick lenses, and desperate. His voice came from somewhere a long way away.

'I don't know.'

Thorne pushed himself away from the table with a roar and charged back across the room towards the door. He wanted two things, badly. He wanted to punch a hole in Palmer's fleshy face and he wanted Palmer to think that he was going to.

'You had your fucking chance…'

'No, please.' There was terror in the voice, and helplessness. Thorne stopped at the door and turned. 'You don't understand. We were at school together…'

Thorne shrugged, raised his palms, waiting. And…?

Palmer turned his face slowly away from him. He cast his eyes back down to the wet tabletop. Down to his own indistinct reflection in the scarred and dirty metal.

'No… I don't know who he is. But I know who he was.'

Detective Superintendent Trevor Jesmond smiled like he was sucking on a lemon.

'Let me see if I've got this straight. There's a double murderer sit ring in the cells at Kentish Town right now, and you're suggesting that not only do we keep the fact that we've caught him to ourselves, but that we start filling the newspapers with stories of other murders that haven't even happened? Murders that we… make up?'

Jesmond raised an eyebrow and looked to the men on either side of him, Russell Brigstocke and Steve Norman.

The fourth man in the room rubbed at a mysterious white patch on the sleeve of his black leather jacket.

'In a nutshell.., yes.'

Thorne was watching Brigstocke and Norman as well, looking for a reaction, trying to gauge just how much, how many, he was up against. He thought that Brigstocke looked non-committal, the slight shake of his head unreadable. Norman, the oily media merchant, just looked bored.

Thorne spoke again, thinking: I've beaten tougher opposition than this. 'We didn't catch him.'

Jesmond stared. 'I'm sorry?'

'We didn't catch Palmer. He wandered in off the street.'

Brigstocke leaned forward. 'Tom, splitting hairs isn't…'

'It makes a difference.'

The DCI leaned back again, the head movement loud and clear this time. Don't go getting cocky and fucking up your chances, Tom. This whole idea sounds stupid enough as it is…

It was two days since Palmer had walked a little unsteadily into a police station with a head wound, a revolver and a few dark secrets to whisper. The idea had lodged itself in Thorne's head from the moment Palmer had first spoken to him.

I don't know who he is…

The idea grew, rolled around his brain like a snowball being pushed around a field, making more noise as it gained weight, groaning, until it was massive and immovable, impossible to ignore. Palmer had been like a man in a dream, terrified of waking up to the nightmare of an agonising reality.

He told Thorne all he knew. About the past and the messages and the terror, and Jesus, the excitement. He told him all he'd done. With his knife and his hands and the tears that had to be wiped away, so that he could see their faces properly as he killed them. Now, he wanted no more than to be punished for it. To be put somewhere secure. To be removed. Thorne though, wanted much more and as soon as the plan had become fully formed in his mind, he had offered Palmer a way, surprising and simple, to make the waking up more bearable. To end the nightmare…