Mark Billingham: Sleepyhead

Cheap bracelets and big, ugly earrings.

He mourned her and hated her.

He needed to move. Now it was just about disposal. Quick and easy.

He began to strip her.

Thorne picked up the bottle of red wine from the side of his chair and poured another glass. Maybe forty-year-old men were better off on their own in neat, comfortable but small flats. Forty-year-old men with bad habits, more mood swings than Glenn Miller and twenty-odd years off the market had very little say in the matter. A taste for country-and-western hardly helped.

Johnny was singing about memories. Thorne made a mental note to programme the CD player to skip this track next time. Had Frank been right when he'd asked if the Calvert case was still part of the equation?

The one fresh and tender corpse…

Fifteen years was too long to be lugging this baggage around. It wasn't his anyway. Fie couldn't recall how it had " been passed on to him. He'd only been twenty-five. Those far above him had carried the can, as it was their job so to do. He'd never had the chance to take the honourable way out. Would he have done it anyway?

One man, released…

He'd had no say in letting Calvert go after the interview. The fourth interview. What happened in that corridor and later, in that house, seemed like things he'd read about like everybody else. Had he really felt that Calvert was the one? Or was that a detail his imagination had penciled in later, in the light of what he had seen that Monday morning? Once everything started to come out, his part in it all was largely forgotten anyway. Four girls, deceased…

Besides, what was his trauma – God, what a stupid word – compared with the family of those little girls who should still have been walking around? Who should have had their own kids by now.

Memories are made of this.

He pointed the remote and turned off the song. The phone was ringing.

'Tom Thorne.'

'It's Holland, sir. We think we've got another body.'

'You think?'

His stomach lurching. Calvert smiling as he walked out of the interview room. Alison staring into space. Dead Susan, dead Christine, dead Madeleine, crossing their fingers.

'Looks the same, sir. I don't think they'd even have passed this one on to us but she hasn't got a mark on her.'

'What's the address?'

'That's the thing, sir. The body's outside. The woods behind Highgate station.'

Minutes away, this time of night. He downed the rest of the glass in one. 'You'd better send a car, Holland. I've had a drink.'

'Best of all, sir…'

'Best?'

'We've got a witness. Somebody saw him dump the body.'

I could sense that Tim really wanted to know who the flowers were from. He didn't say anything, but I know he was looking at them. He didn't ask me. Maybe that's because it was a question he actually wanted an answer to, and not just a pointless conversation with his ex-girlfriend who's now a retarded mong. Sorry, Tim. But nothing can prepare you for this, can it? I mean, you go through all the usual stuff,, holidays together, meeting each other's friends. He never had to deal with meeting the parents, jammy sod. His were a nightmare! But this was never part of the deal, was it? "How would you cope if I was on a life-support machine and completely unable to move or communicate?" never really comes up in those early intimate little chats, does it?

Oh, and I've got an air mattress now, to stop me getting bed sores apparently. It's probably hugely comfy. Makes a racket, though. Low and electrical. Sometimes I wake up and lie in the dark thinking that somebody's doing a bit of late-night vacuuming in the next room.

Anne's got the hots for that copper, I reckon. He does seem nice, I grant you. Nicer than her ex anyway, who sounds like a tit. The copper's funny, though. I was pissing myself when he apologised for being a bit whiffy. I heard Tim asking one of the nurses about the flowers. There was no card and the nurse went away to ask one of her mates. Now I think Tim suspects I'm having an affair with a policeman. Obviously, he must be a fairly strange policeman with a taste for cheap yellow nighties and extremely compliant girlfriends who never answer back.

What's that old joke about the perfect woman? If I was a nymphomaniac and my dad owned a brewery, he'd be quids in…

The Sierra pulled up behind the operations van. As soon as Thorne stepped out of the car he could see that things were going to be difficult. Even at two o'clock in the morning it was still muggy but there was rain coming. Valuable evidence would be lost as the scene turned quickly to mud. The various photographers, scene-of-crime-officers and members of the forensic team were going about their business with quiet efficiency. They knew they didn't have very long. Anything useful was usually found in the first hour. The golden hour. Tughan would still have everything covered anyway: he'd have rung for a weather forecast. This was their first sniff of a crime scene, and nobody was taking any chances.

Thorne set off down the steep flight of steps that led to Highgate tube station and gave access to Queens Wood the patch of woodland bordering the Archway Road. As he walked he could see the glare of the arc lights through the trees. He could see the figures of forensic scientists in white plastic bodysuits, crouched over what he presumed was the body, in search of stray fibres or hairs from the girl's clothing. He could hear instructions being barked out, the hiss of camera flashes recharging and the constant drone of the portable generator. He'd been at many such scenes in the past, far too many, but this was like watching the A team work. There was a determination about the entire process that he'd seen only once before. There was a distinct absence of whistling in the dark. There was no gallows humour. There wasn't a flask of tea to be seen anywhere.

It was only when he ducked under the handrail and began to pull on the plastic overshoes provided by a passing SOCO that Thorne realised just how difficult a crime scene this would be to examine. He also saw at once how callous the killer had been in his choice of dumping ground. The body lay hard against the high metal railings that bordered the pavement all the way down the hill. On one side lay the main road and on the other, some hundred feet of dense woodland on a steep hill leading down to the underground station at Highgate. The only access to the body was up the hill and through the trees. Though a well trodden path had already emerged, it was still a slow process negotiating the route to the body. The ground was hard and dry but it would take only ten minutes of rain to turn it into a mud chute. By the time they'd got the scene protected with polythene tents it would hardly have been worth the effort. He hoped they got what they needed quickly. He hoped there was something to get. Dave Holland came jogging down the slope towards him. He was backlit beautifully by the arc lights. Thorne could quite clearly make out the silhouette of a notebook being brandished. He doesn't look like a policeman, thought Thorne, he looks like a prefect. Even with a hint of stubble, his tidy blond hair and ruddy complexion made him the obvious target for comments of the aren't-policemen-looking-younger-these-days variety. Pensioners adored him. Thorne wasn't sure. Holland's father had been in the force and, in Thorne's experience, that was rarely without problems. He doesn't even move like a copper, he thought. Coppers don't skip down hills like mountain goats. Coppers move like.., ambulances.

'Cup of tea, sir?'

OK, perhaps he'd been a bit naive. There was always tea.

'No. Tell me about this witness.'

'Right, don't get too excited.'

Thorne's heart sank. It was obviously not going to be earth shattering.