Mark Billingham: Lifeless

Though this was Steve Norman’s only word on looking up from his desk, his face said an awful lot more: expletives mostly; the sort people blurted out when they were particularly worried.

Thorne walked toward the desk, tossing the empty cardboard box at Norman from several feet away.

Norman stood up, fumbling clumsily for the box as it knocked a photo frame and pen set flying. “What the hell d’you think you’re doing?”

“That should be big enough,” Thorne said. “And it’s strictly for personal items only. I don’t want to see any Metropolitan Police Press Office staplers going in there, all right?”

“I don’t know what it is you want, but-”

“I want you to hurry up. You can write your resignation letter later on.”

Norman shook his head, squeezed out half a very thin smile. “I’d heard rumors,” he said. “People were saying you’d lost it.”

Thorne moved toward him quickly enough to make Norman take a step back and find himself against the wall.

“Alan Ward hasn’t really started talking,” Thorne said. “Not about some things, anyway. I reckon it’s probably just because he hasn’t been asked the right questions yet. What do you think?”

Norman looked like he was thinking about a lot of things, but he said nothing.

“I mean, obviously, they want to put the murder investigation to bed first.” Thorne leaned against the wall, his face a foot or so away and level with Norman’s. “That’s fair enough, wouldn’t you say? It’s understandable if inquiries as to where Ward may have got certain bits of information from aren’t exactly top of the list. There’s even a chance that they might never come up…”

“Are you trying to threaten me?”

“Trying?”

“I wish you’d get on with it…”

Thorne’s eyes flicked to the cardboard box and then back to Norman. “Empty your fucking desk…”

Norman looked over to where a pattern of colored rings was snaking its way across his computer screen, then down at his highly polished brogues for a few seconds. He sighed, irritated, as though the whole affair were some trifling inconvenience, then stepped forward and began throwing open drawers.

Thorne walked across to the window and took in the view across the RAF Museum to the M1 beyond. He spoke to Norman without turning round.

“If I thought you’d done it for money, you’d be the one going in a box, do you understand? But I think you were just trying to impress him.” He pointed out of the window. “I could see that when I met the pair of you in the car park down there. You were like a kid who doesn’t have many friends, making sure everybody knows you’ve got a new best mate. I’m guessing that after you’d leaked the story about there being an undercover copper out there, Ward came to you sniffing around for more information. Trying to find out exactly how much you knew. So you thought you’d show off a little…”

“I thought he was after a story,” Norman said. “That’s all. I thought he was angling for an exclusive. I couldn’t have known what he really wanted, for Christ’s sake…”

“He probably flattered you, right? Told you what a valuable source you were; said that the two of you worked well together. Made you think you were important. Gave you a hard-on, right?”

“He said he’d do nothing with it until after it had all come out. ..”

“So you gave him my name?”

Thorne saw the movement in the glass: a small nod.

“It was only to be used as part of a bigger story, once the investigation had been completed. Look, I fucked up, fair enough? Thorne…?”

Thorne turned, pointed to the files that Norman had taken from the drawers and dropped onto the desk. “Into the box. You’ve got five minutes.”

Norman did as he was told.

“I suppose I should be grateful that you fucking up didn’t get me killed. It was my good luck that it wasn’t me who got kicked to death. Very bad luck for you though, because now I’m still here to make sure you answer for the man who was killed.”

“Terry Turner.”

“Knowing his name won’t convince me that you give a shit…”

Norman started to move faster, his face for the first time betraying the fear that Thorne might actually do something physical. He used the edge of his hand to drag pens and paper clips from the desktop into the box, then paused to look up. “You were wrong about one thing,” he said. “It wasn’t me who went to the papers with the undercover story in the first place. I can’t make those decisions; you know that. It came from higher up, from an officer on your side of things…”

Thorne knew Norman was telling the truth. It made sense. There would have been those who believed, once Thorne himself had been arrested and shot his mouth off, that the operation had been fatally compromised. That one more leak couldn’t hurt.

“There was a lot of criticism,” Norman said. “A hell of a lot of pressure. The body count was going up and it looked like we were getting nowhere. Someone decided it would be a good idea to let people know that the Met was actually doing something.”

Someone decided. Jesmond…

Thorne turned back to the window, saw the midOctober afternoon turn a little brighter, and decided after a minute or two that he wanted to get out and enjoy some of it. At the door he turned and watched as Norman dropped the photo frame and pen set into the box and sat down heavily in his chair.

“This might well be it,” Thorne said. “I haven’t really made my mind up. I might leave things as they are. Then again, I might go official with it if I wake up tomorrow in a pissy mood. We’ll have to see how I feel, Steve. There’s always a chance that I might decide to wait awhile, a few weeks or a couple of months say, then turn up unannounced one night. Just pop by, somewhere you aren’t expecting me, with a lump hammer or a cricket bat. See how you’re getting on…”

He didn’t wait around for Norman’s reaction. He walked back down the corridor, thinking about what Spike had said in the tunnel.

Let the bastard sweat for a while…

Thorne stared at himself, blurry and distorted in the dull metal of the lift doors. The beard was gone. Not just the extra growth from his days on the streets, but the whole thing, revealing the straight, white scar that ran across his chin. His hair was shorter than it had been in a long time. He’d lost a little weight, too, he thought.

He’d had his old man’s overcoat dry-cleaned, which had got rid of the smells he’d wanted rid of. And though he’d normally have preferred something a little shorter, and perhaps not as heavy, he thought it looked pretty good. They reckoned there was a cold snap on the way, so he guessed he might have to wear it a good deal from now on, and probably right through the winter. He’d need it most days, like as not.

It would go back in the wardrobe after that, as soon as the weather picked up. He’d hang it up, then maybe look at it again next time the temperature dropped; think about bringing it out next year. It wasn’t really his style, after all. But he’d wait and see how he felt.

He’d wait and see how he felt about a lot of things…

The lift stopped at the first floor and an officer Thorne recognized got in. They’d worked together five, maybe seven, years before, on a case he could barely remember.

The man looked pleased to see him. Nodded as he reached for the button, then turned with a smile as the doors closed.

“Tom. You look well…”