Mark Billingham - Death Message

Skinner, Thorne and Holland were standing in the large, dimly lit kitchen of a Victorian semi-detached house in Stoke Newington. It was a lively enough location: Clissold Park on the doorstep; a busy market on Church Street at the weekends. Once popular with dissenters and radicals, this area of north London retained a multi-ethnic, Bohemian feel, in the village at least; easygoing, peaceful. But Skinner’s house was no more than a few streets from where, in 1967, Reggie Kray had murdered Jack ‘The Hat’ McVitie, skewering him repeatedly with a carving knife. And not a million miles away from where, nearly forty years later, someone had done much the same thing to Deniz Sedat.

Skinner’s wife put her head around the door; asked again if Thorne or Holland would like anything to drink. Skinner said no on their behalf and sat back down at an orangey pine table.

He pointed to Thorne’s mobile phone. ‘That was yesterday.’

‘When?’ Holland said.

‘I’d nipped out to get a sandwich, same as usual. Half twelve, quarter to one, something like that.’ He pointed again. ‘That’s a hundred yards from my nick…’

Skinner was based at Albany Street station in Camden, on a borough public protection unit. It was a nice cushy number, the sort of job that most coppers would kill to get, towards the end of their thirty years in. Checking to see that the occasional sex offender was where they should be was about as stressful as it got. Meetings and beanbag sessions, as much tea and biscuits as you could handle, and no likelihood of anything eating into your weekends. Plenty of free time to garden or golf. Or to see how much beer you could get down your neck, which seemed to be the way Paul Skinner preferred to pass his Saturday mornings.

A can of bitter and the sports pages of the Daily Star were both open on the table in front of him. As he had known in advance that Thorne and Holland were coming, Paul Skinner was clearly not too bothered what sort of an impression he gave.

He was somewhere in his mid-fifties. An open-necked white shirt hung off a frame that was slight but still muscled. His sandy-coloured hair was thinning but just about doing its job, and the eyes were bright behind steel-rimmed specs.

‘So, Marcus Brooks still not ringing any bells?’ Thorne asked.

Skinner had a habit of licking his lips all the time, as though they were dry and sore, or he was contemplating taking a bite out of someone. He licked them again before taking a quick swig of beer. ‘Not even slightly,’ he said. The accent was pure south London; the voice gruff enough to go with it. ‘And I’ve got a decent memory for names, so…’

‘What about the Black Dogs?’

‘Bikers, right?’ Thorne nodded. ‘Nasty fuckers, I’ve heard.’

‘You’ve never had any dealings with them?’

‘I know people who have.’ Skinner looked from Thorne to Holland. ‘This bloke Brooks. One of them, is he?’

Thorne explained the part Marcus Brooks had once played in the history of the Black Dogs motorcycle club. His time in prison and the unsolved deaths of his family. The part he was playing now.

‘Jesus… you never know how people are going to react, do you? Something like that happens, tips them over the edge.’

‘Right,’ Holland pushed himself away from the worktop and leaned against the opposite wall. ‘And now he’s taking pictures of you.’

Skinner licked his lips, stared down through the hole in the top of his beer can.

‘We need to find out why,’ Thorne said.

‘Like I said, the name means bugger all, but I think I remember that original case, as it goes.’

‘July 2000…’

‘Yeah. Geezer getting done by a burglar, sounds familiar. I think I was just starting on the Flying Squad at the time, but I had a few mates on Organised Crime, you know? This was not long after I moved across from the old AMIP East, which was where I knew your guvnor from.’ He turned to look at Holland; explained himself as though he were talking to a wet-behind-the-ears trainee. ‘AMIP. Area Major Incident Pool. “Homicide East”, as it is now.’

Holland could see that Thorne was smirking and had to look away. ‘Cheers…’

‘Change the names of fucking everything,’ Skinner said. ‘Every ten minutes.’

‘You don’t have any connection with the officers who investigated the Tipper murder?’ Thorne asked.

‘Not that I can think of.’

‘You don’t know Sharon Lilley?’

Skinner shook his head; emptied his can. ‘Not surprised Russell Brigstocke made DCI, though. He was a decent bloke.’

‘Still is,’ Thorne said.

‘Can lick all the right arses if he has to, mind you. Knows the game.’

Thorne would normally have agreed, but he remembered Brigstocke’s face the day before, after his session with the DPS. ‘Listen, you might not know Marcus Brooks,’ he said, ‘or at least not know how you know him…’

‘I don’t know him.’

Thorne held up his hands, said, ‘Right, whatever,’ but he was keen to move this along. They’d explained about the picture messages when they’d called the night before, gone through it again when they’d first arrived, but Skinner did not seem to have grasped the seriousness of the situation. It was as though he’d been shown a clip of somebody else. ‘The bad news is that he seems to know you.’

‘And that’s not good for anyone’s health,’ Holland added. ‘The people whose photos we get sent have definitely looked better.’

Skinner thought about it. ‘Why is Brooks sending you these messages, anyway?’

‘He was in prison with someone I put away,’ Thorne said. ‘Someone who thought it might be fun to get me involved.’

‘Well, maybe that’s what the connection is to me.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Like that, through a third party.’

‘It’s possible…’

‘Maybe I put a friend of his away some time. One of his family.’

‘Maybe.’ Thorne thought it was unlikely. And he knew that Skinner thought it was unlikely, too. While they were talking long shots, Thorne decided to chance his arm. ‘I don’t suppose the names Jennings and Squire mean anything, do they? Coppers.’

Skinner looked blank. ‘I’ve met a lot of coppers.’ He shrugged. ‘I had a skipper called Jenner, when I worked in Kennington…’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Thorne said. ‘We’ll check into that third-party thing, but in the meantime, if you think of anything…’ Skinner nodded, pushing himself up and stepping around Holland to get to the fridge. ‘Obviously we’ll be putting a watch on the house, clearing some time off with your DCI.’

Skinner shut the fridge door. There was another beer in his hand. ‘Will you fuck,’ he said. ‘I can watch out for myself and I certainly don’t need time off. I think I’m safe enough at work, don’t you?’

‘Brooks killed his second victim in a busy hospital,’ Holland said.

‘Yeah, well, he’s not going to walk into a police station, is he? However fucked up he is.’

Thorne could see little point in arguing. Whatever needed to be done would happen. He moved to let Skinner back to his chair and threw a look at Holland. ‘We’d better get out of your way,’ he said.

That seemed to be fine with Skinner. He began flicking through the back pages of his newspaper. ‘What are you, Arsenal?’

‘Spurs,’ Thorne said. ‘Yourself?’

‘Millwall, tragically. I’ll be there this afternoon, watching us get stuffed.’

‘Character building, though,’ Holland said. ‘Right?’

‘Christ.’ Skinner popped the ring-pull on his can. Sucked froth from around its rim. ‘How much fucking character does one man need?’

Turning from the doorstep – Skinner watching them all the way and his wife peeking, somewhat nervously around him, from further back down the hall – Thorne and Holland were all but flattened by a big man barrelling across the front garden.