Mark Billingham - Buried

‘I’m not sure how long I’m going to be at Kathleen Bristow’s. I’m hoping SOCO will be about done, and I want to have a good go at those filing cabinets. Maybe what’s in there can give us a clue about what might have been taken.’

‘How did it go with the brother and his wife?’

It took no more than the sigh and the traffic noise, a second or two of the pause before she began to answer, for Thorne to realise that he’d asked cleverer questions.

A makeshift stage had been set up in his old man’s front room.

Sitting on the solitary chair, Thorne could hear the voices from behind the hastily rigged-up curtain, as his father and his father’s friend Victor got themselves ready. Thorne glanced over at his mum’s old clock on the mantelpiece. He needed to get back to work and didn’t really have time for this.

‘Are you going to be much longer?’

His father yelled back from behind the curtain, ‘Keep your fucking wig on!’

Thorne froze as he saw the smoke curling underneath the thick, black material. He got up and ran for the curtain, but found himself unable to reach it. He clawed at fresh air and shouted to his father on the other side, screaming at him to get out.

‘Relax,’ his father said. ‘Sit down. We’ll be ready in a minute.’

‘There’s smoke…’

‘No, there fucking isn’t.’

‘Stop swearing.’

‘I can’t fucking help it.’

The curtain rose and Thorne fell back in his chair as his father and Victor stepped forward through waist-high dry ice.

Jim Thorne grinned and winked. ‘Told you it wasn’t smoke, you big cock!’

The show itself wasn’t bad.

Victor walked across to a piano and started to play. Thorne’s father began to sing, but the cheesy rendition of ‘Memories’ fell apart when he forgot the words almost straight away, mugging furiously as he gave it up as a waste of time. Then they went into the patter…

‘Do you know they’ve spent more money on developing Viagra than they have on research into Alzheimer’s?’

‘That’s terrible,’ Victor said.

‘You’re telling me. I’m walking around with a permanent stiffy and I can’t remember what I’m supposed to do with it!’

Then more of the same. All the usual jokes, reeled off one after the other, with Victor playing straight man and cheerily feeding the set-ups to his old friend. Stuff from Thorne’s father about how Alzheimer’s wasn’t all bad: how at least he never had to watch repeats on TV, and how he could hide his own Easter eggs, and how he was always meeting new friends.

‘As long as you don’t forget your old ones,’ Victor said.

‘Of course not.’ Beat. Look. ‘Who are you again?’

Thorne enjoyed every minute of it, thrilled to see his father so happy. He forgot about the time and about the work he should be doing as those expressions of loss and confusion he had always dreaded seeing were transformed into something comical, as his father stared out at him in mock-bewilderment, his eyes bright.

Thorne laughed, and applauded another badly timed gag. The noise of his clapping faded on cue as his father turned to Victor and stage-whispered from the side of his mouth: ‘I’m killing ’em.’

‘You’re on fire, Jim.’

‘Too bloody true I am!’

Thorne whistled as the old man turned, revealing the elaborate and colourful flame design that had been embroidered on to the back of his jacket. He stamped his feet as Jim Thorne began to dance, as he moved his hips and rolled his shoulders, so the flames appeared to be climbing slowly up his back.

‘Dad…’

His father turned to look at him. ‘Don’t panic, Son. It’s not what it looks like.’

But, suddenly, Thorne knew that the flames were real; that they were burning through his father’s polyester suit and eating away at the flesh beneath.

He could smell exactly how real it was.

He reached across to slam down the large red button by the side of his chair and a bell began to ring; deafeningly loud, but fading, just as his applause had done, each time his father said something.

‘That is so rude.’

‘What is?’ Victor asked.

‘Fancy not turning off your mobile phone during a show!’

Thorne’s hands were over his ears. He couldn’t hear himself screaming at his father to shut up and get out, or begging Victor for help.

‘Bloody funny-sounding ice-cream van,’ Jim Thorne said.

‘It’s a fire alarm, you stupid old bastard.’

‘Don’t jump to conclusions.’

‘We need to leave now. It’s a fire alarm.’

His father’s smile was visible in flashes through the crown of flames. The mischief in his voice was clearly audible above the spatter, and the crackle of burning hair.

‘Is it, Tom? Are you sure?’

Thorne lifted his head and reached for the phone, wiped away the string of drool that hung between his cheek and the desktop.

‘Were you asleep?’

‘No…’

‘You’re such a shit liar,’ Hendricks said. He recognised something in Thorne’s tone, or in the silence. ‘Same dream?’

Thorne sat up straight, then rose slowly to his feet. ‘More or less,’ he said. He groaned, rolling his head around. His back was complaining and he felt as if someone had been standing on his neck.

‘I wish I had time to take naps,’ Hendricks said.

‘It’s been a very long day.’

‘For you and me both, mate.’

‘Yeah, sorry. I almost forgot you were there this morning.’

‘Trust me, I’d rather not have been. There’s times I wish I’d never gone into medicine. When I think I should have listened to my parents and studied hard to be a ballerina, like they wanted.’

Spoken in Hendricks’ flat, Mancunian accent, such comments rarely failed to improve Thorne’s mood. The dream was already fading, though the smell was still strong enough…

‘No surprises on the PM?’

‘None at all in terms of cause of death. I found a large tumour in Kathleen Bristow’s stomach, though. I’ve no idea if she even knew about it.’

The woman was dead, so there was no real reason for Thorne to find this as depressing as he did.

‘What time d’you think you might be getting away?’ Hendricks asked.

Thorne looked at his watch. It was nearly half past seven. He’d slept for around half an hour, but it had been light outside when he’d closed his eyes and now it was starting to get dark. He’d check with Brigstocke, but bearing in mind he’d racked up back-to-back eighteen-hour shifts, he didn’t think there’d be much objection to him heading off. ‘I’ve got to shoot up to Arkley, but that shouldn’t take too long. Home by nine-thirty, ten o’clock, I would have thought.’

‘Fancy a late one in the Prince? Couple of games of pool?’

Thorne still didn’t know if he’d be seeing Porter later, but he reckoned Hendricks wouldn’t mind being stood up if it came to it. ‘Yeah, why not? I won’t sleep much anyway…’

‘As long as you don’t use the bad back as an excuse when I thrash you. Fiver a frame?’

The door opened, and Yvonne Kitson marched across to her desk with a face that said she was an inch from chucking it all in. She dropped her bag, switched on the light, then walked over and leaned against the wall. She looked like she wanted to talk; like she wanted Thorne to know about it.

‘I’d better go, Phil. I’ll call when I’m nearly home.’

‘Right. See you later.’

‘Everything OK?’

‘Yeah, I’m great,’ Hendricks said.

As a liar, he was no better than Thorne.

‘You’re getting far too worked up about this whole case, because you think you fucked it up last time,’ Thorne said as he replaced the receiver.