Mark Billingham - Scaredy cat

'I don't need a fucking lecture, Holland. All right?'

'You're not going to fucking well get one,' he said. 'I just want a shower and I'm away…'

The smile came back then, of a different sort entirely. 'Right, back off home to her indoors, once you've washed the smell of me off your cock…'

Holland reached for a towel, wrapped it around his waist. 'Yeah, right. Change the subject, whatever.' He reached into the shower, turned on the taps, held his hand under the water waiting for it to get hot. 'Do you get high at work?'

McEvoy laughed and coughed at the same time. She spat something out into the sink. 'High? Jesus, Holland, you sound like my dad…'

The water was suddenly red-hot. Holland pulled his hand away quickly. He wanted to hit her. He wanted to shout, so he shouted.

'OK… slaughtered, wankered, off on one, monged, fucked up… whatever bit of stupid, fucking druggy jargon is the most current. Fair enough?'

'Well, we have been reading our pamphlets haven't we?'

'Answer the question.'

'What do you think? Do you think I take drugs at work? Do you not think I can do my job?'

'Not if you're using at work, no.'

McEvoy cocked her head, as if she was thinking about his answer. For a few moments they stood there, saying nothing, the small bathroom starting to fill with steam. She ran a hand through her wet hair and sniffed. 'So, now what happens, constable?'

Holland had no answer. Her dressing gown was starting to gape and his eyes dropped, just for a second, to her breasts. He felt himself harden immediately. She saw it at once and smiled, opening the dressing gown completely.

'Well, I'm still up for it if you are. I mean cocaine doesn't make you quite as horny as ecstasy but still…'

Before he could stop himself, Holland was moving across the bathroom, ripping the dressing gown from her shoulders and pushing her down on to the floor.

It was far better than when they had done it an hour earlier, better than it had ever been. Their voices, as they moaned and shouted and swore, echoed off the tiles. The hiss and spatter of the shower was not loud enough to drown out the noise.

In Martin Palmer's bathroom, Thorne stared at himself. Weighing up his options if, when, he walked away.

Thorne the pub landlord. Quite a few went down that road anyway, why not sooner rather than later? A couple of extra pounds and a beard maybe. Early mornings, changing the barrels, a free bottle or two for the local uniforms. Piece of piss… Thorne the shopkeeper. Why the hell not? The graying hair slicked back and someone else to do the accounts. No need to kowtow either. Curmudgeonly, characterful, with a faithful clientele… Thorne, forty-one and fucked. The copper who was fooling nobody.

He leaned forward slowly until his forehead was flat against the cool mirror. Opening his brown eyes wide, he stared at the long, thin snakes of blood crawling across the whites, the creamy crumbs of sleep still trapped in the lashes and the lines underneath, up close, like the skin of an old man.

Like his father's skin.

Thorne opened his mouth. A long, low moan escaped and was swallowed by the splash of the cold water that poured into the sink. The breath he pushed out to follow it rose and fogged up the mirror. He pushed himself away from the glass, raised a hand to wipe away the condensation and looked at the face of a man who was dead-on-his feet tired. Tired of waking up and needing a minute or two. Of bodies in baths and in student bedsits, of chit-chatting to killers and of needing to remind himself who and what they were.

Tired of being on his own. Tired of being so fucking angry. Tired of waiting.

The noise of the running water faded away until it was no more than a faraway hum, and for a moment his mind was wonderfully clear and empty. It was just a moment…

Then, in a rush: the gulp and rumble of the plumbing, the shock of the ice-cold water on his hands and face, Charlie Garner still there, hammering when he closed his eyes, and somewhere, the sound of a phone ringing…

When Thorne ran back into the living room, Palmer was holding out the chirruping mobile like an extremely bright dog with a stick of dynamite in its mouth. As Thorne reached for it, the ringing stopped.

'Shit…'

He snatched the phone, punched at it, called up the last number received. It wasn't one he recognised.

The voice that answered was terse, professional. A man's voice. A police officer's voice.

'Yes?'

'This is Tom Thorne. You just…'

'Oh, right. This is DS Jay from Harrow Station here. I'm in attendance at a murder scene, and I know some of your lads are on their way, but I thought I might as well try you, because my victim has got your card in his jacket pocket.'

Thorne's mind began to race. 'Have you got an ID on the body?' He looked across at Palmer whose fingers were entwined across the back of that thick neck, his head shaking, his eyes glassy.

'Yes, nice easy one,' Jay said. 'Everything here in the wallet, which is handy. The poor bastard's head has been battered into the middle of next week. Looks like he was a teacher at a local grammar school.'

The realisation was instant then, and dreadful. Something that did not belong, dropping, slapping, crunching into place. Like a coffin toppling from the shoulders of pallbearers and smashing onto a concrete path. For no particular reason, Thorne saw the smiling face of the English teacher who had showed him and Holland around the school.

'Cookson… Andrew I think…'

'What?'

'Medium height, dark hair, mid-thirties.'

'Sorry. This bloke's a damn sight older than that…'

The telephone line crackled, but Thorne heard only the terrible noise of the coffin hitting the ground, the deafening sound of the wood splintering as it hit. Before DS Jay had a chance to speak the name of the dead man out loud, Thorne knew that Ken Bowles had been right to be afraid of the future.

Now, so was he.

This time, Thorne wasn't even allowed at the meeting… There are dozens of pubs in London with what can only be described as a less than salubrious past. Places where strong drink and acts of violence have come together, often infamously, to create moments of history.

The Ten Bells in Spitalfields, which used to be called The Jack the Ripper. Where the man himself is thought to have drunk, where several of his victims plied their trade, where, over a hundred years after five local prostitutes were butchered in three months, you could buy Jack the Ripper books, mugs and baseball caps and, most bizarre of all, you could watch strippers a couple of lunchtimes a week.

The Blind Beggar in Bethnal Green, where, if people are to be believed, at least a hundred thousand East Londoners saw Ronnie Kray shoot George Cornell, allegedly for calling him a 'big fat poof'. And the Magdala Tavern in Hampstead, where Ruth Ellis put five bullets into the pointless prick of a man who told her he loved her, three months before she became the last woman in Great Britain to go to the gallows. The Magdala Tavern, where Tom Thorne was sitting, early on a Monday evening, nursing a pint, waiting to hear what his sentence would be.

It was a pub he was fond of anyway; somewhere to pop into after spending an hour tramping across the Heath and marveling at the stupidity of grown men wanting to spend their free time flying kites. The beer was good, the landlord was amiable enough and the food was passable. It was the dark history of the place though, its associations, that drew Thorne, that engaged him. He could never resist putting a finger into those bullet holes that still cratered the tiling on the wall outside. It made him feel connected somehow. He would inevitably turn then, and imagine her.

Always in black and white.