Mark Billingham - Lifeless

Thorne grunted. He did think it was strange, but he was already thinking about something else, something Moony had just said. There was only one thing it could possibly mean…

He became aware of Moony talking again and looked up. “What?”

“She’s pretty fit,” Moony said. He nodded across to where Spike and his girlfriend were talking to one of the care workers. The three of them were laughing, drinking tea. “ Her. One-Day Caroline.”

Thorne’s mind was still in several places at once, but one part of it was curious enough. “Why d’you call her that?”

Moony looked pleased with himself again, like this was something else he was going to relish passing on. “Because she’s always bleating on about how she’s going to get herself clean ‘ one day.’ Then, when she tries to give up, one day is usually as long as she lasts…”

Thorne looked over, watched Caroline absently trailing her fingers down Spike’s arm as she listened to the care worker, nodding intently.

He pushed his chair away from the table. “So, come on, then,” he said. “You’ve had more than a couple of minutes. What did I do before this?”

Moony looked suddenly serious, as if he were getting in touch with something significant, something profound, deep down in his pickled innards. “It’s business, definitely business,” he said. “Some sort of financial thing. Accountancy or stocks and shares. I reckon you were loaded and then you lost the fucking lot. I’m right, aren’t I? I’m never fucking wrong.”

“Bang on, mate.” Thorne raised his hands. “You are absolutely bang on. That’s seriously spooky.” He stood and walked away, leaving Moony nodding slowly, gently patting the bottle in his pocket as though it were his pet. Or his muse.

Out near the reception desk, Thorne all but bumped straight into the man who’d walked in when he’d been talking to Maxwell and Hendricks that morning. Maxwell’s new boss…

“Oh, hi, I’m Lawrence Healey.”

The tone was not one Thorne had been on the receiving end of for a few days. It was brisk but friendly; respectful, even. Healey proffered a hand and Thorne shook it, wondering for just a second or two if the man knew he was really a police officer.

“Brendan tells me you’re new.”

“New-ish,” Thorne said.

“Well, I know how you feel. I’m a new boy myself.

If there’s anything you need, anything you want to talk about, you mustn’t be shy about it. Yes? You know where we are…”

Thorne said that he did, and that he certainly wouldn’t be.

As he moved toward the exit he could still make out the hiss and blather of Radio Bob’s broadcasts, coming from the cafe, on the other side of the door behind him.

“Are you receiving me? Are you receiving me…?”

London stank of desperation.

This time of night, of course, it smelled of all sorts of things: fags and fast food; piss and petrol. Still, in spite of all the money that was clearly being spent- the wealth on display in the rows of Mercs, Jags, and Beamers, and in the ranks of overpriced restaurants-you could catch the whiff of desperation almost everywhere. Pungent and unmistakable. Classless and clinging, and far stronger than anything being rubbed onto wrists, or rolled across armpits, or sprayed over shoppers by those grotesquely made-up hags in Harrods and Selfridges.

Where he was walking, the desperation was of the common or garden variety. A need for warmth, food, or a fix. A need for comfort. But some of the rarer blends of that distinctive scent were around as well, drifting through the West End, there if you could nose them out beneath the everyday stink of chicken and vomit and beer.

From Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road, it floated south-the stale desperation for a smarter phone and a younger partner mingling with those more basic, bodily needs, reeking in Soho and the Circus-before moving along Piccadilly, where the drive to be better dressed, better off, and better than gave off the sharpest stench of all. It was a world away from the gutters and the shitty cut-throughs, of course-from the alleyways that were presently his own area of operation-but he knew that the desperation was of an even headier kind in Old Bond Street and the Burlington Arcade…

It was already clear to him that things had changed since he’d killed the driver. Walking around within that rough square bordered by Oxford Street, Regent Street, Shaftesbury Avenue, and Charing Cross Road, he’d noticed that more of them were settling down in pairs. Looking out for each other; one asleep and the other keeping at least one eye open.

It was understandable. More than that, it was commendable.

Word would probably have spread faster than head lice anyway after the driver had been killed. After the second one, for certain. But now the television and the newspapers were all banging on about the danger to what they’d all taken to calling the city’s “most vulnerable citizens.” It was tricky to see it clearly in a community as shifting-as tidal, they said-as this one was, but panic was starting to set in.

Now, that was another smell he knew far better than most people.

He also knew very well that panic wouldn’t save anyone. Panic was what you saw in the eyes of dead men and what stained the floor beneath them.

Moving past Charing Cross Station for the second time that evening and on toward Waterloo Bridge, he peered up every likely-looking side street and into every pool of shadow, humming a song from the mideighties. Something about panic on the streets of London. He couldn’t remember who the song was by…

It wasn’t as if he was going to have any problem finding someone alone and fucked up and begging for a good kicking. The very nature of these people would work against them in the end. If they were cut out to stick together, to bond with others, you’d hardly see them curling up in puddles and sleeping in their own shit, would you?

Singling one of them out would be easy enough.

They were the leavings; the ones who had failed at everything and would ultimately fuck up at the most basic task of staying alive. Failure was their strong suit, and, at the end of the day, helping one more of them do what they were obviously good at wasn’t going to cost him a great deal of sleep.

How could you take someone’s life when they didn’t really have one in the first place?

Moony was two bottles dead to the world, but he still woke up the second the boot was placed across his neck.

“Jesus!”

The sole was wiped slowly across a cheek, then lifted. “I thought it was your mate Paddy who was the religious one.”

As Moony turned to look up, Thorne bent and grabbed hold of the conveniently wide lapels. He dragged him fast across the narrow street, leaving sheets of cardboard and blankets trailing in his wake, Moony yelped like a throttled dog.

“Hey!” A figure took two tentative steps toward them from the end of the street.

“Fuck off,” Thorne said, and the figure did as he’d been told.

Thorne slammed Moony into a wall plastered with posters for boy bands and nightclubs, pushed him hard onto his arse, and squatted down close to him.

“Oh my Christ,” Moony said, breathless.

“There you go again,” Thorne said. “Strange how people turn to Him when they think their number’s up.” He pressed a palm against Moony’s heart. “That’s going ten to the dozen, that is.”

“What do you”-three gulps of air-“fucking expect?”

“You thought I was the man who killed Ray, didn’t you? The man who kicked Paddy’s brains into the middle of next week.” Thorne took a handful of the loose flesh around Moony’s chest and dug in his fingers. “You thought you were about to get some dosh pinned onto you, right?”