Mark Billingham - Scaredy cat

He wondered what had become of the man who'd tried to help him and got a good kicking for his trouble. He probably hadn't made the same mistake again.

He still felt guilty that he hadn't gone back. He'd scanned the papers for days afterwards but found nothing. The man was probably not seriously hurt, but the boy couldn't forget the pain and fury on his face. Twenty-five years on and Thorne could still see it, and hear the soggy thump as the man had crashed down on to his back in the slush. Thorne closed the bedroom door, sat down on the side of the bed and started to undo his shoelaces. Twenty years a copper and he still couldn't understand why they'd attacked him. He'd only smiled at them.

Thorne thought: so this is old age.

A heavy chair near the television, with its shit-coloured seat covered in plastic and panic buttons everywhere. Handles around the bath and piss-soaked knickers in the sink, and a woman who couldn't really give a toss, popping round twice a day to see if you're dead yet.

'Do you take sugar, Mrs. Nicklin?' McEvoy stuck her head round the kitchen door.

Annie Nicklin shook her head at nobody in particular and Thorne relayed the answer to McEvoy with a more obvious gesture of his own. Though she hadn't said a lot, the woman in the heavy chair, with her clawed hands resting on top of a green blanket, was still fairly sharp mentally, but her body was on the way out. Arthritis, diabetes, angina.., the catalogue of diseases had been reeled off cheerfully by the warden – a hard-faced article named Margaret – as she'd shown them into Annie's flat and explained that they wouldn't get a great deal out of her. Nobody ever did.

McEvoy brought the tea through, and as she handed round the mugs, Thorne continued to ponder the question that had absorbed him since he'd walked through the door. Which was preferable? A good brain and a body that was fucked? Or hale and hearty flesh and bone, with nothing left up top? Obviously, nobody ever really got the choice, but still, Thorne couldn't help weighing it up. Considering the options. It looked as if his old man was heading down the second road, but Thorne reckoned that when it came to it, he'd prefer to go to pieces upstairs and downstairs. At least that way, if he were sitting in his own mess, he'd be blissfully unaware of the fact…

He sipped his tea and thought about meeting Ken Bowles the day before. There was a man who could see pain and loneliness just up ahead. He took a biscuit and thought about the Enrights. As if the everyday agonies of old age weren't bad enough. He had the same old thoughts about the boy, Charlie Garner, who was no age at all. His life still ahead of him and already blighted. His mother taken away by the son of the old lady sitting a few feet away, slurping tea in a shit-coloured chair covered with plastic. Thorne stared at Annie Nicklin. When she had looked at her son, at Smart, back when he was no older than Charlie Garner, what had she seen in his future? What had she dreamed he might become?

'That all right for you, Annie?' McEvoy asked. Mrs. Nicklin nodded again, slurped a bit more, continued to stare at the television screen, even though it wasn't switched on. Thorne hoisted his behind from the depths of the soft, springless sofa and leaned forwards. 'We just wanted to ask you about Smart.'

Nothing. Just the noise of the drinking. The endless beep beep of a lorry reversing somewhere. A dog howling in one of the other flats. Thorne looked across at McEvoy, raised an eyebrow. You have a crack, and keep it nice.

McEvoy, much to her annoyance, had won that morning's tossup. Thorne had not been able to decide which would work better with the old woman – Holland's boyish, floppy-haired charm or the empathy of a younger woman? The coin had picked McEvoy and in the car on the way out to Stanmore, with Thorne diving and trying to coax any kind of warmth out of the Mondeo's knackered heater, she'd not been shy about why she was pissed off about it…

'I don't particularly feel like wheedling stuff out of a sweet old lady whose son happens to be a psychopath. You don't need to have read a lot of textbooks to figure that she might have something to do with that.'

Thorne hadn't read a single textbook and he was having none of it.

'What? Did she lock him in the coal shed? Make him wear women's clothes and lipstick? We need to talk to this woman, and frankly, I couldn't be less interested in a debate on nature versus nurture…'

McEvoy clearly didn't care whether he was interested or not.

'Nurture, every time. Every time.'

Thorne stopped at traffic lights and yanked up the handbrake.

'Supposing you're right. You aren't, but supposing you are…' McEvoy said nothing, stared out of the window – 'what about Nicklin's father? Why can't he have been the one who beat poor little Smart with a coat hanger or whatever?' Palmer had already told him that Nicklin's father had left home when he was still a toddler. Nobody knew, or by all accounts cared, if he was alive or dead. For a few moments, McEvoy thought about what Thorne had said, or at least pretended to. 'No. Mothers and sons. Fathers and daughters…'

Thorne leaned on the horn as a white van roared away from the lights and swerved in front of him. 'You've never met my father, have you?' McEvoy didn't laugh, so Thorne stopped being nice about it.

'Listen, if there's anything this woman can tell us that might help, I want to hear it OK? You're a copper, not an amateur shrink, so go in there and do your job…'

McEvoy had been laying it on with a trowel ever since they'd got there.

'Maybe we could start with when Smart left home, Annie.'

The old woman cleared her throat. Her chest rattled for a second or two after she'd finished. Then she spoke. 'That's where it starts and where it finishes. He left. The end.' It was her longest sentence so far. Thorne looked at McEvoy. Carry on…

'So you never heard from him?'

Annie Nicklin picked up an empty teacup, looked at it, put it down again. 'There was a letter once, from London.'

'Do you still have it?'

She turned her head slowly round to look at them and smiled, though she was clearly in some pain. 'I never opened it.'

'Did you not want to know where he was?' Thorne asked. He couldn't be sure whether she was choosing to ignore him or the question. Either way, she wasn't answering.

McEvoy moved on. 'He left in September 1985, is that right?'

The old woman nodded.

'Just like that? Out of the blue?'

'I wasn't.., hugely surprised.'

Thorne thought: or bothered…

'This was a month or so after the disappearance of Karen McMahon?' Mrs. Nicklin licked her lips, stared ahead. McEvoy tried again. 'When Stuart left, that would have been about a month after…?'

With a small moan, Mrs. Nicklin reached for the stick that was propped against her chair and, grunting with the effort, she pointed with it to a bottle of pills on top of the television. Thorne stood up and fetched the bottle. 'These?' He opened the bottle. 'How many? Just one?' Mrs. Nicklin nodded and he handed her a tablet. There was a glass of water on the tray attached to her chair and he passed it to her. She swallowed. Thorne sat down again. Pills for Annie's body which was giving up the ghost. Still sharp up top though. Sharp enough to understand everything. To decide when might be a good moment to take a tablet in order to avoid a question she didn't want to answer…

'Was he upset about Karen? Was that why he left?' McEvoy was craning her head round, trying to make eye contact. 'How much was he seeing of Martin Palmer before he left?' Somewhere, the dog was still crying, and now, Annie Nicklin was avoiding McEvoy's questions as well.

Thorne pushed himself up, stepped in front of her. She began to click her tongue and tried to move her head. Thorne stood solid, between the old woman and the television that wasn't on. The gentleness had gone from Thorne's voice. 'Tell me about Karen, Mrs. Nicklin.' There was a low moan from deep in her throat but that was as communicative as she was getting. Thorne leaned down close to her, very little patience left. 'Tell me about Karen McMahon.'