Mark Billingham: Sleepyhead

Thorne looked straight ahead, saying nothing. Christ, he was so English!

'What about the china? Who keeps the cat? Did you hear about the lunatic who's stroking out women all over London? You know the sort of thing…'

Phobia. Death. Divorce. Thorne wondered if perhaps they should move on to the crisis in the Middle East.

'Forty-eight hours after she was brought in we gave Alison an MRI scan. There was edema around the neck ligaments – bright white patches on the scan. You see it in whiplash victims, but with Alison I thought it was unusual. On top of what my husband had told me-'

'What about the Midazolam?'

'His benzodiazepine of choice? It was a very clever choice, as a matter of fact, especially as there was every chance it would be the same drug given to Alison in A and E. How's that for muddying the waters?'

Thorne stopped. They were outside Alison's room.

'Can we check that?'

'I did. And it was. I know the anaesthetist who was on duty. at the Royal London that night. The toxicology report showed Midazolam in Alison's bloodstream but it would have done anyway – that's what was used to sedate her in A and E. But we also take blood routinely, on admission, so I checked. Midazolam was present in that first blood sample too. That's when I decided to contact the police.'

Thorne nodded. A doctor. He had to be. 'Where else do they use Midazolam?'

She thought for a moment. 'It's pretty specialised. It's, A and E, Anesthetics, that's about it.'

'Where's he getting it from? Hospitals? Can't you get this sort of stuff over the Internet?'

'Not in these quantities.'

Thorne knew that this would mean contacting every hospital in the country for recorded thefts of Midazolam. He wasn't sure how far back to check. Six months? Two years? He'd err on the side of caution. Besides, he was sure Holland could use the overtime.

Coburn opened the door to Alison's room.

'Can she hear us?' Thorne asked.

She brushed Alison's hair off her face and smiled at him indulgently. 'Well, if she can't, it's not because there's anything wrong with her hearing.'

Thorne felt himself redden. Idiot. Why did people whisper at hospital bedsides?

'To be honest, I'm not sure. The early signs are good. She blinks to sudden noises but there are still tests to be done. I talk to her anyway. She already knows which registrar is an alcoholic and which consultant is doing it with three of his students.'

Thorne raised an inquisitive eyebrow. Coburn sat and took Alison's hand.

'Sorry, Detective Inspector, girls' talk!'

Thorne could do little but watch her among the mess of wires and machinery. Wires and machinery with a young woman attached. He listened to the hiss of Alison's ventilated lungs and felt the throb of her computerised pulse, and he thought about the one doctor out there somewhere who was most definitely on his shit list.

He sat on the tube trying to guess how much longer the businessman opposite him had to live. It was a game he greatly enjoyed.

It had been such a wonderful moment the day before when Thorne had looked straight at him. He hadn't really seen him: it had been no more than half a second and he was just a passer-by with his hood up, but it had been a lovely bonus. The look on the policeman's face had told him that he'd understood the note. Now he could relax and enjoy what had to be done. He'd lie in the bath when he got home and think about it some more. He'd think about Thorne's face. Then he'd grab a few hours' sleep. He was working later on.

The man opposite looked flushed. Another tough day at the office. He had a smoker's face, pale and blotchy. The broken veins on his cheeks were probably a sign of bad circulation and excessive drinking. The small, creamy blobs on the eyelids, the xanthelasma, almost certainly meant that his cholesterol was way too high, and that his arteries were well furred up.

The businessman gritted his teeth as he turned the pages of his newspaper.

He gave him ten years at most.

As his battle-scarred blue Mondeo moved smoothly through the early-morning traffic on the Marylebone Road, Thorne nudged the Massive Attack tape into the stereo and leaned back in his seat. If he'd wanted to relax and switch off he'd have plumped for some Johnny Cash or Gram Parsons or Hank Williams, but there was nothing like the repetitive, hypnotic thud of music he was twenty-five years too old for to concentrate his thoughts. As ever, when the mechanised beat of 'Unfinished Sympathy' started thumping from the speakers he pictured the incredulous look on the face of the teenage assistant in Our Price. Smug little git had looked at him like he was some old saddo trying to pretend he still had his finger on the pulse.

The spotty teenage face became the infinitely more attractive one belonging to Anne Coburn. He wondered what sort of music she liked. Classical, probably, but with a Hendrix album or two stashed away behind the Mozart and Mendelssohn. What would she make of his penchant for trip-hop and speed-garage? He guessed that she'd go for the saddo theory. He stopped at the lights and rolled down the window to let the beat blast out at the snooty looking woman in the Saab next to him. Thorne stared straight ahead. When the light hit amber, he turned, winked at her and pulled gently away.

And when he got back to HQ? There would be a convincing babble of efficient-sounding voices, a scurrying back and forth with files, and the buzzing and beeping of faxes and modems. Thorne smacked out the rhythm on his steering-wheel. And as a backdrop to this montage of proper procedure there would be the wall; a blackboard detailing names, dates and ACTIONS, and lined up above it there would be the pictures: Christine, Madeleine and Susan. Their unmarked faces sharing a pallid blankness, but each, to Thorne, seeming to capture a dreadful final instant of some unfamiliar emotion. Confusion. Terror. Regret. All in extremis. He turned up the music. In factories and offices across London, workers were copping furtive glances at calendar girls – Saucy Sandra, Naughty Nina, Wicked Wendy. The days, weeks and months that lay ahead for Thorne would be counted off by the reproachful faces of Dead Christine, Dead Madeleine and Dead Susan.

'How's it going, Tommy?'

Christine Owen. Thirty-four. Found lying at the bottom of the stairs…

'Shake 'em up, will you, Tom, for fuck's sake?'

Madeleine Vickery. Thirty-seven. Dead on her kitchen floor. A pan of spaghetti boiled dry…

'Please, Tom…'

Susan Carlish. Twenty-six. Her body discovered in an armchair. Watching television…

' Tell us what you're going to do, Tom:

They would make lists, no question, long lists they would cross-reference with different ones. DC's would ask hundreds of different people the same questions and type out their notes and DS's would take statements and make phone calls and type out their notes, which would be collated and indexed and, perhaps, several thousand fields full of cows' worth of shoe leather later, they might get lucky…

'Sorry, girls, nothing yet:

They weren't going to catch this bloke with procedure. Thorne could feel it already. This wasn't the convenient copper's hunch of a thriller writer – he knew it. The killer might get himself caught. Yes, there was a chance of that. The profilers and psychological experts reckoned that, deep down, they all wanted to be caught. He'd have to ask Anne Coburn what she thought about that the next time he saw her. If that turned out to be sooner rather than later he wouldn't be complaining.

Thorne pulled into the car park and killed the music. He stared up at the dirty brown building in which Backhand had made its home. The old station on Edgware Road had been earmarked for closure months ago and was now all but deserted, but the vacant offices above had been perfect for an operation like Backhand. Perfect for the lucky buggers who didn't have to work there every day. An open-plan monstrosity – one enormous fish tank for the minnows with a few smaller bowls around the edges for the bigger fish.