Mark Billingham - Death Message

He’d followed the big van past Southall Park, along the Broadway and down along the route of the canal between the school and the retail park. He’d slowed and turned in when he’d seen the van do the same. Watched the girl walk up to the window and realised that the driver had known exactly what he was looking for.

And what he wanted for his money…

Brooks had got what he needed. Invisible behind a row of recycling bins, he put the phone away. Disgusted with the man leaning back against the dirty, wet wall. Disgusted with himself for being excited.

He watched as the man pushed; the tom’s ponytail swinging as her head moved back and forth. Remembering the feeling – Christ… trying to remember it, years ago – when Angie had done the same thing to him.

Closed his eyes, but could remember only that he would never touch her again. Feel her again.

He took one more good look at the man’s face. Then he lowered his head, and waited for them to finish.

They lay in the dark afterwards, Thorne pressed up against her, sucking in mouthfuls of hair. The breath coming back. They’d finished with Louise on top, and when he’d told her he was coming, she’d pushed herself down in an effort to hold him inside her. He’d rolled from beneath her in the nick of time and she’d groaned and dropped on to her side.

‘I thought it wasn’t safe,’ he said finally.

‘No.’

‘So, why…?’

She grabbed his hand, pulled his arm tighter around her waist.

‘Do you want to get pregnant?’

‘No. Just at that moment, you know? I wanted you to stay inside me.’

A cat – Thorne couldn’t be sure that it was Elvis – was yowling in the garden. The old lady who lived upstairs had some TV quiz show on stupidly loud.

‘I should probably wear something next time.’

‘What, like a fireman’s helmet and wellies?’

‘A condom.’

She snorted. ‘Yes, I know . It just makes me laugh to hear you say it. That you find some things hard to say. You’re weird.’

‘ I’m weird?’

They both laughed and rolled over together. Thorne brought his knees up as Louise curled against him. Her breath was on his back and he could feel her eyelashes against his shoulder when she blinked.

He listened to the applause from the television upstairs. And when it had been switched off, he lay there thinking: I don’t know this woman at all.

Remember that time I missed Robbie’s birthday party? The last one before I went inside, the one in the burger place. I know you will, because we had a steaming row about it. You telling me that Robbie was in tears and me shouting all the more because I felt like such an arsehole about it. I’d been doing some stupid favour for Wayne. Poxy driving job down on the coast. Waiting around, wondering what I was involved in and thinking about Robbie running around with his mates and trying his new football shirt on.

It was a favour I owed the bloke, that was the thing.

Thing about it is, I know sometimes people have taken the piss, made me look like a right mug, whatever, but I’ve always tried to be as good as my word, to be reliable. You say you’ll do something, you do it. You understand that, don’t you, Ange?

Same as this business with Nicklin. Liking someone, not liking them’s got fuck all to do with it. When someone does you a favour, you owe them and, whatever else, I’ve always settled my debts. Simple as that.

From what Nicklin told me inside, I reckon this bloke Thorne is pretty much the same. The sort who follows things through, you know? He’ll feel as if he owes something to these fuckers, to their nearest and dearest at any rate. That’s exactly what Nicklin wants, if you ask me. Thorne won’t leave it alone, he’ll get right deep into it. Once he’s made a promise he’ll keep it, or at least he’ll try to keep it, and I’ve always respected that.

I’ve not learned much. I know, fuck all probably.

Except how important it is to know you’re doing the right thing, even if it doesn’t always feel like it.

Funny fucking pair, the two of us. Me and this copper. Sitting here, filling up these pages, trying to work things out in this poky shithole, I can’t help wondering what he thinks about what I’m doing. I don’t really care, but all the same, it’s on my mind.

Which one of us is going to end up looking like a mug.

Maybe both of us…

The sun was just coming up, and Thorne scraped a thin crust of frost from his windscreen with the edge of a CD case. The trees on his road – he had no idea what sort they were – were completely bare, and all had been severely cut back for the winter. Looking along the pavement, there was an almost perfect line of them. Bleached and stumpy in the half-light.

The message had woken him half an hour before. The tone he’d set up on the prepay handset.

He’d stood there in his dressing-gown, the cat pushing at his shins, and watched the clip. If he hadn’t recognised the man, he might have thought he’d been sent some random snippet of amateur porno. But dark and fuzzy as the image was, there was no mistaking the face; the punter being serviced by a woman who was almost certainly a hooker and was definitely not the man’s wife.

Not Mrs Bin-bag.

Thorne had stared at his other phone, at the mobile that was being monitored, and waited anxiously to see if the message would be sent to that handset too. He had given it a couple of minutes: felt colder and more uncertain with every few seconds that passed.

Louise had staggered through, pulling on a robe and asking who his message had been from.

‘Some fucking upgrade offer…’

‘What?’

‘Do I want an upgrade?’

She mumbled something, still half asleep, then turned and walked back into the bedroom.

Brigstocke had sounded only barely more awake when he’d answered the phone. ‘Fucking hell, Tom…’

‘How much surveillance have we got on Martin Cowans?’

‘What? Er… there’s an officer at his home address.’

‘What about the clubhouse?’

‘Can’t we do this later?’

Thorne had heard a woman’s voice; a muffled question as a hand was placed over the mouthpiece; children shouting somewhere. The Brigstockes had three kids to get ready for school every morning. ‘Russell?’

‘Yeah, there’s someone at the clubhouse. And I think S &O have got people on the place as well.’

‘How many?’

‘Fucked if I know. Nobody’s breaking into there though, are they? You said it was like Fort Knox.’

‘We thought we’d got Skinner’s place covered, remember?’

Brigstocke was wide awake now, and irritated. ‘We’ll talk about this at work, OK? I’ve got a meeting at nine…’

Thorne tossed the CD case back into the boot and climbed into the car. He had already started the engine, giving the BMW’s ancient heating system a chance to take the chill off, but the steering wheel was still freezing to the touch and he couldn’t be arsed to go back inside for his gloves. He looked at his watch; it was a good time to be driving. All being well he’d get in before seven-thirty.

Pulling the car round into a three-point turn, his eye was caught by movement above him, and he glanced at the tree opposite; at a fat, wet pigeon, perched awkwardly, halfway up. Its movements – the umbrella-shakes of its feathers – made it seem as if it were shivering.

Cold and pissed off; naked as the tree.

He didn’t quite have the place to himself, but for half an hour or so he was able to sit in relative peace and quiet. To eat toast and drink tea, and worry about the health and safety of a drug dealing, heavily tattooed gangster. To reflect on a course of action that meant he was the only one who knew Martin Cowans was in immediate danger.