Mark Billingham - Lifeless

Letters faded to the blue of his eyes: O+ S.O.F.A.

“I’ve no idea if he killed Chris Jago or not, but I’m the fourth member of that crew, and I want to stay alive as long as possible, thank you very much. I’m not claiming to be Brain of Britain. I was just a pig-thick squaddie, but it seemed like a good idea to keep a fairly low profile. Like you said, I kept my head down, and I’ve got away with it. Until now, at any rate.” Eales shrugged, blew on his coffee. “You lot might want to talk to me, but last time I checked, that wasn’t fatal.”

Mackillop felt like straps were being fastened tight across his chest. Dry-mouthed in a second, he sucked in the words and tried to arrange them into the question that was begging to be asked: You’ve no idea of who killed Chris Jago?

But he said nothing. The suspicion that he was out of his depth had suddenly become a horrible certainty. He felt like he was back on the course, that this was part of some elaborate training exercise. It was as if Eales were one of his tutors playing a role and this was the crucial point in the assessment process. The part where he could fuck up everything if he wasn’t very careful. Mackillop knew that he was being given the chance to put the big question, but he also knew that the moment belonged by right, and by seniority, to others.

Eales nodded toward the mug in Mackillop’s hand. “Do you want another one of those?”

The clever thing to do, the correct thing, was to back off a little. To sit tight, and wait for Andy Stone to arrive. Mackillop handed the mug across and turned back toward the bed-sitting room.

The Latest Victim. The First Picture…

The newspaper felt a little spongy. It was stained in places by whatever liquid had pooled, brown and viscous, in the bottom of the bin. But the headline remained stark enough; the expression on the face of the young Terry Turner still hopeful, and heartbreaking.

“Weird to see him looking so young,” Maxwell said. “Without the bloody padlock…”

Thorne tore through the pages until he found the one he was after: the photo of another young man, this one in uniform, staring into the camera; wideeyed and half smiling, like it didn’t much matter what was coming.

Thorne got up off his knees. “Look at this.” He folded the newspaper over and handed it across.

Maxwell stared at the picture for a few seconds, at the appeal for information beneath it, then turned back to Thorne. The expression on his face made it clear that he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be looking at; what he was meant to be seeing.

“Could that be him?” Thorne asked.

Maxwell went back to the photo. “ This bloke?”

“Could he be our Detective Sergeant Trevor Morley?”

“How old’s this picture?”

“Just look, Bren…”

Maxwell did as he was told. Let out a long, slow breath…

Thorne moved quickly across to stand alongside him, nodded down at the photograph. “That was taken when he joined up in the late eighties.” He suddenly remembered the digitally aged version that had been broadcast the night before; that Hendricks had talked about watching. “Did you not see this on Crimewatch last night?”

“I was out,” Maxwell said.

“Shit…”

“I was out on the streets, doing my fucking job. Fair enough?”

“Just stick twenty years on his face, all right? He’d be late thirties now, somewhere round there. Hair longer, obviously. A beard. From what you said, the coloring’s the same, right?”

“Sandy, but with some gray. And the freckles are darker, but I suppose that would have happened…”

“Look at the mouth,” Thorne said. “The smile would almost certainly be the same.”

“Maybe. Yeah… this could be him.”

“ ’ Could be,’ or is?”

“Jesus. I should have looked at this properly when I saw it the first time. I read about what had happened to Terry; that’s all. I never really took this in.”

“Well, now’s your chance. Come on, Brendan.”

Maxwell stabbed at the page. “The face has filled out a bit and it’s lined. Not wrinkles exactly; hard lines, like creases, you know? Like it’s weathered.”

It was good enough…

Thorne knew that they’d made a huge mistake; that they should at least have considered the possibility of this for longer and not dismissed it as quickly as they had. Though the evidence had certainly pointed toward the man behind the camera, they’d got it the wrong way round.

“It’s me…”

“What?” Maxwell turned, thinking that Thorne was talking to him, but he saw that Thorne had his phone pressed hard to his ear.

“We’ve been idiots, Russell,” Thorne said. “Ryan Eales isn’t the next one on the list. He’s the one who’s been working his way through it…”

Ryan Eales turned side on, leaned against the wall in the archway between kitchen and bed-sitting room. “Bit of luck that I came back when I did. That you were sitting outside in your car like that.”

“We’d have knocked on your door eventually,”

Mackillop said.

“I might not have answered it.”

Which would, Mackillop thought, have been understandable. All in all, things had turned out pretty well. It was equally likely that, if there had been no reply, and the man in the ground-floor flat turned out to have been the pothead Eales said he was, nobody would have bothered coming back. Mackillop laughed. “I suppose we should be grateful that you’d run out of biscuits,” he said.

“Right…”

The weather had changed suddenly yet again. Sunshine was screaming in through the big bay window and a smaller skylight toward the bathroom, flashing where it kissed the white walls and the varnish on the honey-colored floorboards. From where he was standing, near the top of the stairs, Mackillop saw the gleam from two pairs of boots, highly polished and placed side by side between bed and wardrobe. He saw magazines neatly piled beneath the bedside table and freshly ironed shirts folded symmetrically on a chair next to the bathroom door. “You can tell the person who lives here’s ex-army,” he said.

Eales seemed to find this funny. “How come?” “The boots.” Mackillop pointed across to them. “The way they’re arranged; the way everything’s laid out. Neat, you know, and well organized.”

“It’s just the way we’re taught to do things.”

“It must take a lot of effort, though.”

“Not really,” Eales said. “You do things a particular way because it makes sense. Being organized and tidy makes things simpler.”

Mackillop considered this. “I thought about the army myself before I joined the Met. For a short while, anyway.”

“You’d’ve been good.”

“You reckon?”

“Chances are, if you’re a good copper.”

“Getting there,” Mackillop said. He felt himself redden slightly. Looked around the room once again. “Yeah, definitely a soldier’s place

…”

Eales smiled. “Look underneath the bed.”

Mackillop glanced across, then started to move when Eales nodded his encouragement. As he bent down he could see that the base of the bed was actually a drawer. He pulled it out and found himself staring at a collection of military memorabilia: a dress uniform, pressed and folded; a gas mask; badges and medals displayed in open cases; bundles of photographs. And weapons: grenades, guns, a highly polished bayonet

…

“Bloody hell!”

“Don’t worry, the guns have been decommissioned,” Eales said. “Firing pins removed and barrels drilled.”

Mackillop reached toward one of the pistols. “May I?”

“Help yourself. That smaller one’s a Browning nine-millimeter. It’s Iraqi.”