Mark Billingham - Lifeless

“Did you know any of them?” Thorne asked the question casually, through a yawn. “Any of the blokes who were…?”

“I knew Paddy a bit, yeah. Mad as a snake, like, but totally harmless. Paddy was happy with God and a bottle.”

“So you don’t reckon he could have fallen out with somebody? Nobody had a reason to give him a kicking?”

The boy looked straight at Thorne, but it was as though he’d heard a totally different question. He nodded once, twice, quickly. Repeated what he’d just said: “God and a bottle…”

“Right.”

“What’s your name?” Another, equally sudden change of mood and tone.

“Tom.”

“I’ll see you around, Tom…”

“What about you? You might look like the Man With No Name, but you must have one.”

“Spike. Because of the hair, you know? Like the vampire in Buffy .”

Now it was Thorne’s turn to be the one on whom a reference was lost. “Okay, but what’s your real name?”

The boy cocked his head, looked at Thorne as though he, too, were a harmless old nutcase. “Just Spike.”

Then he turned, hoiked up his blanket, and began walking north toward Soho.

The mobile phone Thorne had been issued with was permanently set to vibrate, and had been shoved deep inside the pocket of his overcoat. It had been agreed that Thorne and Holland would talk twice every day, morning and evening. Contact either way could, of course, be made at other times if necessary, and a face-to-face meeting, with either Holland or Brigstocke, would take place, all being well, once a week.

Thorne had already spoken to Holland by the time he walked into the London Lift day center, just after the place opened at nine o’clock. He found himself in a small holding area between the front entrance and a larger glass door. The young Asian man on duty at the reception desk eyed him through the glass for ten, maybe fifteen seconds, before pressing the button that allowed him through the second set of doors.

“All right?” Thorne stepped up and leaned against the counter.

“I’m good, mate. You?”

Thorne shrugged and scribbled his name in the register that had been passed across to him. The receptionist, who wore an ID badge that said raj, tapped a couple of keys on his computer and Thorne was buzzed through the steel door into the cafe area.

A fair number of the gray or orange plastic chairs-scattered around tables or lined against the walls-were already taken. Most people sat alone, nursing hot drinks and rolls, and though a few had gathered in groups, the sound of a knife scraping across a plate rose easily above the muted level of conversation. Considering how busy it was, the place was oddly still and quiet. Thorne knew that half as many people would be making twice as much noise in the Starbucks across the road.

He moved to the end of a short queue, studied the price list on the blackboard behind the counter. He saw a familiar figure rise from a table across the room and nod. Spike walked across, moving a little slower than he had done the night before.

“Found this place quick enough, then?”

“I saw an outreach worker,” Thorne said. “Came along last night after you left, told me if I got down here first thing, I could get a decent breakfast.” The second lie of the day came easily. He’d told the first on the phone half an hour earlier, when Dave Holland had asked him how his night had been.

Thorne looked around. It was a big room, and bright. One wall was dominated by a vast, glossy mural; notice boards ran the length of another.

“You signing on?” Spike asked.

Thorne nodded. He wouldn’t be going to the dole office, but he’d taken the decision early to live on the equivalent of state benefit. He would exist on the princely sum of forty-six pounds a week, and if he wanted any more he was going to have to find his own way to come up with it, same as anybody else sleeping on the street.

He took a step closer to the counter, remembering what Brendan had said about “De Niro shite.”

“The rolls aren’t bad,” Spike said. “Bacon could be crispier.”

“I just want tea.”

Thorne’s instinct at that moment was to put his hand a little deeper into his pocket and offer to buy tea for Spike, too, but he stamped on the natural impulse to be generous. The idea was to fit in, and he knew damn well that, where he was, nobody would make that kind of gesture.

They reached the front of the queue and Spike stepped in front of him. “I’ll get the teas in.”

Thorne watched Spike hand over forty pence for two cups of tea and realized that there was precious little he could take for granted.

They walked over to a table, Thorne a step or two behind Spike, thinking, He must want something. Then, Fuck, I’m doing it again.

“You get much sleep?” Thorne asked.

Spike grinned. “Haven’t been to bed yet, like. Busy night. I’ll crash for a couple of hours later on.”

“Where d’you bed down?”

Spike seemed distracted, nodding to himself. Thorne repeated the question.

“The subway under Marble Arch. I only come into the West End during the day, like, to make some money.” The grin again, spreading slowly. “I commute.”

Thorne laughed, slurped at his tea.

“It’s not bad, this place,” Spike said. He leaned down low across the table and dropped his voice. Thorne could just make out the last gasp of an accent. Somewhere in the southwest he reckoned. “There’s not many centers around like this, where under-twenty-fives and over-twenty-fives can hang around together. Most of ’em are one or the other. They prefer it if we don’t mix.”

Thorne shook his head. “Why?”

“Stands to reason, when you think about it. The older ones’ve picked up every bad habit going, haven’t they? You take somebody fresh on the streets. After a couple of weeks knocking about with someone who’s been around awhile, he’ll be a pisshead or he’ll be selling his arse or whatever.”

It made sense, Thorne thought, but only up to a point. “Yeah, but look at us two. I’ve got twentyodd years on you and you’re the one that’s been around.”

Spike laughed. Thorne listened to the breath rattling out of him and looked into the pinprick of light at the center of his shrunken pupils, and thought: You’re the one that’s picked up the bad habit.. .

Thorne had seen it the previous night: the glow from a streetlamp catching a sheen of sweat across Spike’s forehead, heightening the waxy pallor of his skin. This morning, it was obvious that he’d not long got his fix. Thorne knew that without it he’d have no chance of getting any sleep.

“Can you not get a hostel place?”

“Not really bothered at the moment. When I wake up covered in frost, like, I’ll be well up for it, no question, but I’m all right where I am just now. Been in plenty of hostels, but I’m not really cut out for ’em. I’m too… chaotic, and that’s a technical term. ‘Chaotic.’ I’m fine for a few days or a week, and then I fuck up, and end up back on the street, so…”

Spike’s speech had slowed dramatically, and his gaze had become fixed on a spot above Thorne and to the right of him. Slowly, he lowered his head and turned, and it was as though the eyes followed reluctantly, a second later. “I think… it’s bedtime,” he said.

Thorne shrugged. A junkie’s hours.

Spike slid his chair slowly away from the table, though he showed no sign of getting up from it. On the other side of the room voices were raised briefly, but by the time Thorne looked across, whatever had kicked off seemed to have died down again. “Maybe see you back here lunchtime.” “Maybe,” Thorne said.

“Had enough yet?” Brendan Maxwell asked.