Mark Billingham: Scaredy cat

On the table, Thorne saw another, smaller mirror, and the creased lottery ticket. He knew at once what he was looking at.

'How long have you known about it?' he asked.

'About three weeks.'

'You're a fucking idiot…'

Holland raised a hand to shut Thorne up. Yes, he was a fucking idiot, he was much, much worse, but he had to stop Thorne going off on one. Not now. He could bow his head and accept the bollocking another time. Now, there was something else…

'Sir, I think McEvoy's in some sort of trouble.'

'Some sort…?'

'Real trouble.' Holland couldn't say why he was worried. He didn't know what it was that was nagging at him, couldn't explain where the feeling came from. It made him shiver and it kept him awake, and he needed to tell someone. It was there in McEvoy's eyes and the things she said, and the way she'd been acting for a while. It was as if she had a secret. Another secret…

'What?' Thorne said.

Holland shook his head, looked around the room, searching desperately for something that might bring this indistinct unease into sharp relief. His gaze settled on the computer. . The look on McEvoy's face a few days before, when he'd walked in to the office and found her on the Internet. Panic, and something else. Defiance?

Triumph…?

Thorne watched Holland walk across, pull up a chair, hit the button to wake the machine up.

'What are you doing?'

'I'm going to check her emails.'

'You think she's been ordering drugs by email?'

'No… maybe. I don't think this is about the coke…' Holland began moving the mouse, clicking, opening windows.

'Don't you need some sort of password?'

'I would if I was actually going to sign on to her account, but I should be able to check her filing cabinet – see what she's been sending out, what she's received…'

Thorne nodded, letting Holland get on with it, whatever it was. Cocaine. Thorne had suspected as much. He'd known a few coppers who liked a sniff. It was usually the older ones who should have known better, the ones that couldn't be doing with Ecstasy because it involved dancing. Whatever their reason for doing it, some of them got seriously messed up.

Thorne wondered how far into it McEvoy had got. He looked up and saw the answer reflected around the room, from one mirror to another…

'Fuck… oh fuck, no.'

'What?' Thorne felt the change in his body straight away. He sensed a livening in the nerve endings, a heightening of the senses as he moved rapidly across the room, reacting instinctively to the panic in Holland's voice. 'What is it, Dave?'

Holland ran his fingers through his hair, scratching hard at his scalp, staring in disbelief at the screen. Thorne leaned in and looked over his shoulder. He couldn't immediately work out what he was looking at.

'I can't…'

'She's been getting e-mails from the killer,' Holland said. 'From Night Watchman…'

Thorne felt something prickle around the top of his shoulders, heard his heartbeat quicken. 'Getting them, or getting them and replying?

How long…?

'Wait…' Holland clicked, sorting the mails by date. He began to scroll slowly through them, and Thorne watched it move down the screen in front of his eyes. A correspondence between a woman on his team and the man they were trying to catch. A man who killed more brutally than anyone Thorne had ever lost sleep over.

'A week or more,' Holland said. 'Shit, there's fucking dozens of them…'

It had begun tentatively, like an exchange of letters between lovers to-be. He told her he thought she was special, that there was something about her. He wondered how far across the line she would go to get the right result. His words were cryptic, teasing. Thorne could tell that, at least initially, he had been fishing, trying to find out how much she knew, how much any of them knew about him. He was wooing her. Thorne could see it, clear as day. He wondered if McEvoy had seen it. Her responses were open and forthright. She had fallen for it, or was letting him think she had. Thorne couldn't tell which.

'What the fuck is she playing at…? Holland's panic was increasing with every minute that passed, with every e-mail opened. As Thorne read on, the answer became horribly apparent. The round-the-houses stuff had given way, in the last day or two, to something specific. An invitation. Did she want to meet him? Was she the individual he thought she was? McEvoy had replied. She was everything he thought she was, and more.

'When? There's got to be something that gives us a time…'

'Got it,' Holland said, opening another mail. 'Jesus, it's today. Four o'clock…'

Thorne looked at the time flashing at him in the top right-hand corner of the screen. Whatever the hell McEvoy thought she was doing, she probably had about twenty-five minutes to live.

'Where?'

Holland clicked, scrolled, jabbed viciously at the keys. 'His last email was.., just after one this morning.' He opened the file and they stared at the killer's words on the screen.

Let's make it the place where Martin was told the Jungle Story. Looking forward to it, Sarah…

'What the hell does that mean?' Holland put his finger against the screen and pressed hard, as if he was trying to push through it, rub out the words floating on the other side.

'What about McEvoy's last mail?'

Holland called it up. 'She sent two, one after the other, just before midday today…'

No idea what that means. Should I? If you want me to come, you'd better spell it out.

'Let's see the second one.' Thorne dared not hope. He already knew there was no reply from the killer, nothing that spelled anything out. Would McEvoy's final message be to cry off, to suggest they rearrange? She would have no choice, surely. She didn't know the place he was suggesting…

Going out now. Not sure when I'll be back. Need to know where to meet.

Then, two words that jumped off the screen, sent the guts shooting up towards the throat.

Text me.

Holland's body spasmed. 'Shit. He's sent a text message telling her where to meet him.'

'We don't know if he contacted her at all,' Thorne said. 'We don't know anything. She might come breezing back in here any second, off her tits with a bag full of Charlie.' Holland's look told Thorne that he didn't believe it any more than he did.

Thorne grabbed at the phone on the corner of the desk, thrust it at Holland. 'Call her mobile.'

He walked away, across to the window and stared out into the garden. The wind was coming up. He watched the overgrown grass sway slightly, and the long, rusty mirror bump gently against the fence post. Watching, hoping to hear Holland's concern translate into anger when he got through. Where the fuck are you? Hearing instead a long, frustrated breath, the crack of the phone going down, two more words he could really have done without.

'Switched off…'

Thorne turned around, walked back to the desk and picked up the phone himself. He dialed, waited, then hung up.

'Who are you calling?'

Thorne said nothing, his hand never leaving the receiver. He snatched it up again and dialed the number. He looked away from Holland, waiting for an answer…

'It's me. Tell me about the Jungle Story… never mind that, just tell me! Listen, Palmer, there isn't time for this, tell me what it is. No… forget that, just tell me where. Where was it…?'

Holland couldn't believe what he was hearing. Palmer? What the hell was Thorne playing at…? He stopped thinking about anything at all when Thorne's face changed. Even the bruises on his face seemed to grow momentarily pale. He thought that perhaps Thorne let out a long, low moan, though it might actually have come from him… Thorne hung up with his finger. Gently but quickly he passed the receiver to Holland.