Mark Billingham - Lifeless

Thorne ignored the sarcasm. “Tell me about Spike,” he said.

As soon as the breakfast rush had started to die down, Thorne had wandered out. Holland had told him earlier that Phil Hendricks would be coming in, and Thorne was keen to see him. He’d headed surreptitiously toward the offices. The admin area was on the far side of the top floor and Maxwell had given him the four-digit staff code to get through each of the doors. There were coded locks on every door in the place.

With the open-plan arrangement of offices offering little privacy, Thorne, Maxwell, and Hendricks had gathered in a small meeting room at the back of the building. If anyone wandered in, it would look like a caseworker/client conference of some sort, but Thorne wasn’t planning to hang around very long, anyway. It was just a quick catch-up.

Maxwell was perched on the edge of a table next to Hendricks. “He’s not quite twenty-five, so Spike’s not one of mine yet, but I couldn’t tell you anything even if he was.”

Hendricks looked sideways at his boyfriend. To Thorne, it seemed like a look that was asking Maxwell to lighten up a little. To bend the rules.

“Come on, Phil,” Maxwell said. “You know how it works.” He turned back to Thorne. “Look, I had a long chat with your boss about this. There are major confidentiality issues that have to be considered.”

“Fair enough,” Thorne said. Brigstocke had made the position very clear to him. Unless he had good reason to think it would directly aid the investigation, Thorne would be given no personal information about other rough sleepers.

“It’s just the way we do things. I’ve had Samaritans on the phone trying to trace someone on behalf of parents. People who just want to know if their kid’s alive or dead. The person they’re looking for might be downstairs drinking tea, but I can’t say anything. I can’t tell them because maybe they’re the reason why the kid’s on the street in the first place, you know?”

“Just talk to this kid if you’re interested,” Hendricks said.

Maxwell nodded his agreement, leaned gently against his partner. “Spike’s not shy, I can tell you that much. You’ll get his life story if he’s in the mood to tell you.”

For a few moments nobody said anything. Hendricks and Maxwell were usually a demonstrative couple physically, but Thorne sensed that, at that moment, Hendricks was a little uncomfortable with Maxwell’s arm resting on his shoulder.

There had been periods in the past when the relationship between the three of them had become somewhat complex. Thorne thought that Maxwell could, on occasion, be jealous of the platonic relationship he shared with Hendricks. At other times, after a beer or three, Thorne was not beyond wondering if it was he himself who was the jealous one. Right that minute, he was too tired to think much about anything at all. He took a moment. He knew that if he was going to last the course, this was a level of tiredness he was going to have to get used to pretty bloody quickly.

“So, what’s happening?” he asked Hendricks. Having spoken to Holland, he was practically up to speed, but Hendricks’s take on things, as the civilian member of the team, was always worth getting. “Anything I should know?”

Hendricks looked thoughtful, then began listing the headlines. “Brigstocke’s talking to a profiler. They’re recanvassing the area where Paddy Hayes was attacked. Everyone’s waiting around for the next body to show up, to be honest. Oh, and Spurs lost three-one at Aston Villa last night.”

“Cheers…”

There was a knock and a man stepped smartly into the room. He was somewhere in his late forties with neatly combed brown hair and glasses. He wore jeans that were a fraction too tight and a blue blazer over a checked shirt.

The man took in the scene quickly, then addressed himself to Maxwell. “Sorry, Brendan. Can I have a word when you’ve got a minute?”

Maxwell pushed himself away from the table, but before he could say anything, the man was already on his way out.

“Bollocks,” Maxwell muttered.

Hendricks leaned toward Thorne, spoke in a theatrical whisper. “Brendan’s new boss.”

Maxwell looked none too pleased. “He’s not my boss. He’s just the arsehole who controls our budget.” He walked to the door, stopped, and turned back to Thorne. “I was wrong about it taking a couple of weeks, by the way. You look pretty rough already…”

Thorne watched him leave. There’d been a smile on Maxwell’s face, but it hadn’t taken all the edge off the comment.

“Don’t worry about it.” Hendricks rubbed his palm rapidly back and forth across his shaved head. “He’s just in a shitty mood because he isn’t getting on with…” He pointed at the door.

Thorne nodded. “The arsehole. He sounded pretty posh.”

“Horribly posh. There’s a big consortium running all the outreach stuff now, and they want people with more of a business background. Brendan and a few of the others can’t even fill in a claim form for their expenses, so this bloke’s been shaking things up. There’s a bit of tension.” Hendricks was clearly struck by something hugely funny. “It’s like Brendan’s you, and this new bloke’s Trevor Jesmond.”

Thorne scowled. “Then Brendan has my deepest sympathy.”

“Actually, this new bloke’s not quite as bad as Jesmond.”

“That would be going some…”

“Stupid bugger had some high-powered banking job before this. Jetting all round the world for multinationals, oil companies, whatever, and he chucks it all in. Takes a massive pay cut to come and work for the care services…”

“Bloody do-gooder.”

“Mind you, you could be a paperboy and you’d still be taking a pay cut…”

Thorne stretched, yawned noisily. “I’d better get back out there. I’m sure you must have things that need cutting up.”

“I’ll find something.”

“Brendan told me you think I’m mad,” Thorne said.

“Only moderately.”

“I didn’t see what else we could do. Still don’t.”

Hendricks opened the door. “I’m not worried about the investigation…”

They both turned at the sound of rain blowing against the window, exchanged the comically worldweary look of a practiced double act.

“Brendan really doesn’t approve of this,” Thorne said. The silence told him that this was something Hendricks didn’t need to be told; that this was an issue he and Brendan had probably argued about. “Listen, I know how seriously Brendan takes his job, and I know that all he cares about is getting his clients off the streets. So tell him this when you two kiss and make up later on…”

“Before or after?”

“I’m serious, Phil. Remind him why we’re doing this again, will you? Tell him that there’s someone else out there who wants to get rough sleepers off the street, and this fucker’s got his own way of doing it…”

By lunchtime, the London Lift’s cafe area was busy again. The tables had been pushed closer together and somewhere between thirty and forty people sat eating, or queuing for food at the counter.

Thorne carried a plate of stew across to a table and got stuck in.

Around him were a few faces he recognized. He exchanged nods with one or two people he’d run into during the course of the day so far: an old man he’d walked the length of the Strand with; a Glaswegian with a woolly Chelsea hat and no teeth; a scowling, stick-thin Welshman who’d become aggressive when he’d thought Thorne was stealing his begging pitch, and had then turned scarily affectionate once Thorne had explained that he was doing no such thing. On the opposite side of the room, Thorne saw Spike, sitting with his back to him with his arm around the shoulders of an equally skinny girl.