Mark Billingham: Scaredy cat

Thorne leaned down to pick up the coffee that he'd left on the floor by the sofa. It was stone cold. He looked at his watch. He'd been immersed in the details of death for well over an hour. Thorne was as disturbed as always by this.., capacity he had. He'd tried reading crime fiction once but it had not suited him at all. He could barely read any so-called thriller for more than a few minutes without starting to drift away, and yet a jargon-filled description of ruined flesh had him riveted. He was confident that there was nothing overly perverse in this. He could honestly say that he had never enjoyed watching an autopsy.

The truth was that an intimate knowledge of real killers and real victims made him a difficult reader to please.

Thorne had seen enough wild-eyed gunmen and bloodied blades, and soft-spoken, heavy-lidded perverts. He'd seen plenty of batterers and arsonists and smiling poisoners. He'd seen more than his fair share of damaged bodies: some dead, and others more damaged still, left behind to remember.

He'd seen holes in flesh and holes in lives. Thorne picked up his coffee cup and was heading for the kitchen to make another when the doorbell rang.

Hendricks was standing on the doorstep wearing a floor-length black leather coat and watch cap. He was brandishing a blue-striped plastic bag that was threatening to break at any instant thanks to the vast quantity of cheap lager it contained. The accent hardly suited dramatic declamation, but he did his best. 'Let us drink beer and talk of death.'

Thorne turned and headed back inside. Neither of them was big on ceremony. 'It sounds like you've already started on the drinking bit…'

Hendricks slammed the outer door and followed Thorne inside.

'I've been doing both, mate. I've been with Dr Duggan most of the day…' He closed the inner door and moved into the living room.

'He the one who did the first post-mortem on Ruth Murray?'

'She. Emma Duggan. Very good, and very fanciable, if you like that kind of thing.'

Thorne shook his head and reached into the plastic bag that Hendricks was now cradling gently. 'Formaldehyde does nothing for me, sorry.'

'And I've spent the last few hours up to my elbows in Ruth Murray myself, so yes,' Hendricks said, dumping the. bag on the sofa, 'I did have a couple on the way over.'

While Hendricks took off his coat, Thorne opened a beer and picked up the CD remote control. He switched Cash's Solitary Man back to the beginning. The guitar kicked in on 'I Won't Back Down'. Thorne took the chair and Hendricks the sofa. It was a familiar and comfortable arrangement that, bar a few awkward weeks the year before, had been repeated at least weekly since Thorne had first moved in nearly eighteen months ago. He'd rattled around in the big house in Highbury for three years after his divorce, before finally taking the plunge and buying the flat He still hadn't got used to the place. He did like the oatmeal IKEA sofa a lot better now it had a few beer stains, but though the place was at last starting to look worn, it had become no more welcoming.

The person responsible for most of the stains grunted, at home now and ready to talk about death.

'So…?' Thorne was trying not to sound impatient.

'So… interesting.'

The phone rang. Thorne sighed, pulled himself out of the chair and marched across to where the cordless phone stood, near the front door.

'Thorne…'

'Sir, it's Holland…'

'Nothing so far then?' He could hear the confusion in the silence from the other end. 'Don't worry, Holland, I can always tell if you're excited. Your voice goes up an octave.'

'Sir…'

'So, nothing at all? Maybe we need to widen things geographically as well…'

'There were a couple that looked likely, but there were arrests on both of them and the only other ones, two assaults.., and two women stabbed on the same day in July, didn't pan out timing-wise.'

'Sure?'

'Positive. McEvoy double-checked. Couldn't have been the same killer who did both. Even if… you know, the times of death were a bit off.., he'd have needed a helicopter to have done both of them.'

'OK, knock it on the head… like you weren't about to anyway. Tomorrow you might have more luck. I'm sure this wasn't his first time. You'll get something. Besides, you won't have any distractions.'

'Sorry?'

'I'm taking DS McEvoy with me to Birmingham.'

It took Holland a few seconds to work out why Thorne might be going to Birmingham, and why he would want Sarah McEvoy to go with him. Once he had, he was grateful that he would be the one stuck in front of a computer all day.

Then, after he'd hung up, Holland started to wonder what Thorne had meant by 'distractions'.

'Tell me about interesting.' Hendricks looked up at him and raised an eyebrow. Thorne went on. 'Ruth Murray. "Interesting", you said.'

Ruth Murray. 32. Married with, thankfully, no children. Hers actually the first body to be found, wedged in behind a large metal rubbish bin in a road behind King's Cross station.

Hendricks had helped himself to the meagre contents of Thorne's fridge while he'd been on the phone to Holland, and his reply was broken up as he attempted to swallow an enormous bite of a cheese sandwich. 'I'm writing it up… first thing tomorrow…'

'I won't be here first thing tomorrow.'

'I'll have it on your desk by midday, all right…?'

'Just give me the highlights, please.'

Hendricks wiped his mouth, swung his legs off the sofa and turned to face Thorne. There were important things to be said. 'OK, well first off, don't get too excited about the skin under her fingernails.'

'Because…?'

'Because most of it's probably hers.' He explained before Thorne had a chance to ask him to. 'It's quite common with strangulations. The victim often scratches their own neck in an attempt to remove the ligature.., or in this case the killer's hands.' As Hendricks explained, his hands automatically went to his neck and Thorne watched them scrabbling at the flesh. 'She had good nails.., made a right mess of her neck. She might have scratched him as well though, so it's worth looking at.'

'Carol Garner didn't have good nails?'

Hendricks shook his head. 'Badly bitten…' Thorne wondered if she'd begun biting her nails after her husband had been killed. Looking at her baby son and seeing his father. Never dreaming that the boy would be an orphan before his fourth birthday.

'But…'

'What?' Thorne leant forward, on the edge of his chair. Hendricks had been saving something up. Always the need to show off just a little.

'We might… might, have another DNA source. Duggan missed something.'

'But you said…'

'She was good. Yeah, she is. Just not as good as me.'

Thorne could not keep the irritation out of his voice. 'For fuck's sake, Phil, can we cut the Quincy crap?'

'All right… look, once it had been established that there hadn't been a sexual assault, Duggan didn't see any point in looking for bodily fluids. It was a fair enough presumption really; the body was fully clothed, same as Carol Garner. But I'd checked when I did the PM on her, so I looked anyway…'

Thorne held his breath. He could feel the excitement building in the same place it always did: at the base of his skull. A tingling, a buzzing, a low throb of excitement and revulsion in advance of the detail to come. He hated it when it was sexual. There was always a slightly higher chance of a result, but still, he hated it. Hendricks was equally excited. 'It was Luminol and UV that did it in the end. Tiny patches all over her face and on her arms. It took me ages to work out what it was; it was actually more about working out what it wasn't…'

Thorne nodded. It was good news; if they caught him it almost certainly guaranteed a conviction, but it sickened him just the same. It was no consolation that the killer would probably have done it after Ruth Murray had been killed. If anything, it made it worse.