Mark Billingham: Sleepyhead

'Shut your face, Tom. You're off your face on tranquillizers. I can do anything I like. I just bend your head this way and apply pressure to this point here to kink the artery. It's a delicate procedure this, takes specialised knowledge… I don't know. Army? Martial arts, maybe?

Either way he's a clever bastard. No marks to speak of. It's virtually undetectable.'

Virtually.

Christine Owen and Madeleine Vickery both had risk factors: one in middle age, the second a heavy smoker on the pill. Both were discovered dead at home on opposite sides of London. That they had recently washed with carbolic soap was noted by the pathologists concerned, and though Christine Owens's husband and Madeleine Vickery's flat mate had considered this odd, neither could deny (or explain) the presence of a bar of carbolic in the bathroom. Traces of a tranquillizer were found in both victims, and were attributed in Owens's case to a prescription for depression, and in Vickery's, to an occasional drugs habit. No connection between these tragic yet apparently natural deaths was ever made.

But Susan Carlish had no generally accepted risk factors for stroke, and the tranquillizers found in the one-room flat in Waterloo, in a bottle with no label, were something of a mystery. It was down to the torn ligaments in her neck and one bloody clever pathologist that they'd even got a sniff of it. Even Hendricks had to admire that particular bit of path. work. Very sharp.

But not as sharp as the killer.

'He's playing a percentage game, Tom. Loads of people are walking about with high-risk factors for stroke. You for a start.'

'Eh?'

'Still got a gold card at Threshers, have you?'

Thorne had started to protest but thought better of it. He'd been out on the piss with Hendricks often enough.

'He picks three different areas of London knowing there's a hell of a slim chance that the victims will ever be connected. He goes about his business and we're none the wiser.'

Now Thorne stood listening to the persistent wheeze of Alison's ventilator. Locked-in syndrome it was called. They didn't know for sure but she could probably hear, see and feel. Alison was almost certainly aware of everything going on around her. And she was completely and utterly unable to move. Not the tiniest muscle.

Syndrome wasn't the right word. It was a sentence. And what about the bastard who'd passed it? A martial-arts nutcase? Special Services? That was their best guess. Their only guess. None the wiser…

Three different areas of London. What a mess that had been. Three commanders sitting round a table playing

'Whose Knob's the Biggest?' and putting Operation Backhand together.

He had no worries as far as the team was concerned. Tughan was efficient at least, and Frank Keable was a good DCI, if at times a little too.., cautious. Thorne would have to have a word with him about Holland and his notebook. He never put the bloody thing down. Couldn't the division take on a single detective constable with a memory span greater than the average goldfish?

'Sir?'

Goldfish Boy was back with the tea.

'Who put us on to Alison Willetts?'

'That would be the consultant neurologist, er… Doctor…'

Holland cleared his throat and swallowed. He had a plastic cup of hot tea in each hand and couldn't get out his notebook. Thorne decided to be nice and reached out to take a cup. Holland groped for the notebook.

'Dr Coburn. Anne Coburn. She's teaching over at the Royal Free today. I've made you an appointment for this afternoon.'

'Another doctor we've got to thank.'

'Yeah, and another bit of luck as it goes. Her old man's a consultant pathologist, David Higgins. He does a bit of forensic work. She tells him about Alison Willetts and he goes, "That's interesting because…"'

'What? And he says and she says? Bit of a casual postnookie chinwag, was it?'

'Don't know, sir. You'll have to ask her.'

Standing aside to let a pale ginger-haired nurse through to change Alison's feeding line, Thorne decided there was no time like the present. He thrust his untouched tea back at Holland.

'You stay here and wait for Hinnegan to show up.'

'But, sir, the appointment isn't until four-thirty.'

'So I'll be early.'

He trudged along a maze of cracked red linoleum floored corridors in search of the quickest way to the exit and an escape from the smell that he and every right minded person in the world hated so much. The Intensive Therapy Unit was in a newer wing of the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, but it still had the smell. Disinfectant, he reckoned. They used something similar in schools but that just took him back to forgotten gym kits and the horror of PE in underpants. This was a different smell.

Dialysis and death.

He took the lift down to the main reception area, whose imposing Victorian architecture made a surprising contrast with the modern, open plan style of the hospital's newer parts, There was a faded grandeur about the stone tablets that lined the walls and the dusty wooden plaques inscribed with the names of the hospital consultants. Pride of place went to the full-length portrait of Diana, Princess of Wales, a former patron of the hospital. The painting was accomplished, unlike the bust of the Princess that stood on a plinth next to it. Thorne wondered if it had been sculpted by a patient.

As he neared the exit, the muttered curses and dripping umbrellas coming towards him through the main doors told him that summer was at an end. A week and a half into August and it was over: He stood beneath the hospital's elaborate red-brick portico and squinted through the downpour towards where his car was parked, tight against the railings that ran around Queen Square. People scurried through the rain, heads down, across the gardens or towards Russell Square tube station. How many were doctors or nursing staff?. There were a dozen hospitals or specialist units within a mile of him. He could just see Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital from where he stood.

He turned up his collar and prepared to make a dash for it.

At first he thought it was a parking ticket and he pulled it roughly from beneath the wiper blade. As soon as he removed the single sheet of A4 from the polythene wrapper and unfolded it, he saw it was something else. He carefully inserted it back into its protective wrapping, wiped off the rain and peered at the nearly typed message. After the first four words he was no longer aware of the rainwater running down the back of his neck.

DEAR DETECTIVE INSPECTOR THORNE. WHAT CAN I SAY? PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT. AND DON'T YOU JUST ENVY HER THAT PERFECT… DISTANCE? I INVITE YOU TO CONSIDER THE CONCEPT OF FREEDOM. TRUE FREEDOM. HAVE YOU EVER REALLY CONSIDERED IT? I'M SORRY ABOUT THE OTHERS. TRULY. I SHALL NOT INSULT YOUR INTELLIGENCE WITH PLATITUDES ABOUT ENDS AND MEANS BUT OFFER IN MITIGATION THE THOUGHT THAT A MASSIVE UNDERTAKING OFTEN HAS AN APPROPRIATE MARGIN OF ERROR. IT'S ALL ABOUT PRESSUBE, DETECTIVE INSPECTOR THORNE, BUT THEN YOU'D KNOW ALL ABOUT THAT. SERIOUSLY, THOUGH, TOM, MAYBE I'LL CALL YOU SOMETIME.

Pressure…

Thorne looked around, his heart thumping. Whoever left the note must be close – the car hadn't been there long. All he could see were grim-set, rain-soaked faces, and Holland dodging the puddles as he loped across the road towards him.

'Sir, the boyfriend's just arrived. You must've passed him on your way out.'

The look on Thorne's face stopped him dead in his tracks.

'Alison is not a fuck-up, Holland.'

'Of course not, sir. All I meant was-'

'Listen. This is what he wants.' He pointed back towards the hospital. 'Do you understand?' His shirt was plastered to his back. Rain and sweat. He could barely understand it himself. He could hardly believe what was struggling to come out of his mouth. Holland stared at Thorne openmouthed as he spoke the words that would cost him so much. Words which even as they formed on his lips, told him he should never have agreed to become part of this.