Mark Billingham - Death Message

Standing on the doorstep of Martin Cowans’ semi, Thorne couldn’t help but admire the degree to which the young woman doing the shouting had reinvented herself. There was no hint of anything remotely genteel; not the slightest trace of a ‘Pimm’s and ponies’ accent.

‘And why would I tell you? Even if I did fucking know?’

Thorne wondered if her parents had ever met their prospective son-in-law. He imagined two jaws dropping and the hasty redrafting of wills.

‘Have you called him on his mobile?’ Holland asked.

Bin-bag’s girlfriend almost smiled, but caught herself in time. She took the cigarette from her mouth and flicked it past Holland’s shoulder on to the path. ‘Call him your-fucking-selves,’ she said. She tightened the dressing-gown across her black T-shirt. ‘I’m going back to bed.’

‘Thanks for your help, Pippa,’ Thorne said.

Her eyes widened, furious for just a second before she slammed the door.

Holland left a beat, cleared his throat. ‘Have we got his mobile number?’

Thorne shrugged. ‘I haven’t seen it listed anywhere. He didn’t give us a business card, did he?’

‘Maybe your mate at S &O’s got it.’

Thorne owed Keith Bannard a call anyway. He fished out the number as they were walking back towards the patrol car parked opposite the house. He got Bannard’s voicemail and left a message.

Coming off the back of twelve hours in the front seat of a Ford Focus, the uniformed officer on surveillance had been a tad surly when Thorne and Holland had first arrived. He seemed cheerier now, having obviously enjoyed watching them get Cowans’ front door slammed in their faces.

‘Silly bitch,’ he said. ‘Probably just pissed off because he didn’t come home all night.’

Thorne felt a bubble of panic rise and burst in his stomach. ‘When did you last see him?’

‘He’d already gone out by the time I came on last night. He stays out quite a lot, mind you. Crashes round at other bikers’ places, one of the lads was saying.’

Holland looked at Thorne. ‘We’ve got people watching all the known addresses for Black Dogs members. Shouldn’t be too hard to track him down.’

The officer in the car grinned, tossed his newspaper into the back seat. ‘I reckon he’s got a couple of other women on the go, an’ all.’

‘Jammy sod,’ Holland said.

Thinking about the video clip he’d seen a few hours earlier, Thorne wondered how many of those women Martin Cowans had to pay for.

Kitson carried the cassette player through to her office and closed the door. She’d listened to the most recent batch of calls in the Incident Room, leaning close to the speaker to hear above the chatter; had jabbed at the buttons, pressed REWIND, and listened again to one call in particular.

One that was exciting and confusing in equal measure.

In her office, she played the tape again, studying the transcript of the call as she listened. It was no more than twenty seconds long. Then she went back out and helped herself to the headphones from Andy Stone’s iPod, came back and listened one more time, to make sure.

The voice had sounded familiar to Kitson immediately, but not because she’d heard it when the woman had called before. That first time, when she had obviously rung from a mobile on the street, the voice had been competing with the noise of traffic. The words had been muffled; hesitant and choked with nerves.

This time, there was only the sound of her voice. This time, the woman had been braver. Clearer.

‘I know who killed Deniz.’

And Kitson recognised the voice. The woman had still not been quite brave enough to mention a name, and Kitson could not be sure she was telling the truth. But she knew for certain who the caller was.

From Cowans’ house they drove up on to the main drag and east along the Broadway. The traffic moved slowly through the densely populated half-mile of Asian shops and markets – the Punjabi Bazaar, Rita’s Samosa Centre, the Sikh Bridal Gallery – before they turned into a small road that ran alongside the canal and parked just below the bridge.

Thorne got out and walked back up to lean on a low wall a dozen or so feet above the water. To his right, razor-wire coiled along the top of a fence separating the towpath from a huge B &Q warehouse, its windows dull and its red metal siding streaked brown with dirt and rust.

Holland took a pack of ten Marlboro Lights from his pocket. He pushed at the wrapping with a fingernail for a few seconds, then put it back. ‘What are we doing here?’

It was a perfectly fair question, and Thorne could do no better than duck it. ‘Would you rather be back at the office filling those forms in?’

Dotted along the edge of the black water, overflowing rubbish bags hung from fence-posts every twenty feet or so. The banks were littered with cans and plastic bottles, but Thorne was amazed to see, concentrated in one small spot next to the water, upwards of two dozen swans, gathered as if for a meeting. Most were all white, but a number had darker bills and feathers, seemingly covered in dust. The grass around them was thick with small, white feathers.

It was the sort of surprise that Thorne enjoyed. That London provided now and again.

‘One of them went for me when I was a kid,’ Holland said. ‘Vicious fuckers.’

Thorne moved a few feet along the wall, towards the warehouse. There was a track down to a small area of accessible wasteland, canal-side of the huge metal skips and stacks of wooden pallets. Twenty feet further on, the scrub became the car park of a squat, grey pub; a sign below the flag of St George advertised ‘Food and Live Premiership Football’.

He replayed the video in his head.

It was here, or somewhere very like here, that Brooks had hidden, to film Martin Cowans’ sordid encounter. Had he followed them? Maybe Brooks had set up Cowans in advance, had paid the hooker himself. Thorne tried to remember the fuzzy image of the man with the woman kneeling in front of him; to picture the outlines of the buildings just visible against the black sky behind them. He stared around in the vain hope of seeing something familiar.

‘Are we looking for something?’ Holland asked.

Thorne saw only a distant gasometer, and, emerging from a house in the terrace below them, an Asian woman waving a stick, sending a clump of pigeons rising from her front garden.

He wasn’t sure what he would have done if he had recognised something.

‘What’s that?’ Holland asked, pointing.

Thorne looked down and saw something football-sized and almost round in the water. It bobbed against the black brick, catching the light. ‘It’s a coconut,’ he said. ‘Wrapped in plastic.’

‘Come again?’

‘Some of the local Hindus chuck them in during religious festivals, as a sacrifice. It’s the closest they can get to a sacred river.’

‘The Grand Union Canal?’

‘Well, in theory, the coconuts can float all the way out to sea. Maybe find their way into the Ganges one day.’

‘That’s fucking ridiculous. They’ll be washed up in Southend, if they’re lucky.’

‘It’s just a gesture, Dave.’

Holland shook his head, carried on staring. ‘Is it even possible?’

‘Nothing wrong with being optimistic,’ Thorne said.

Especially when it was just about all you had left…

They wandered for a few minutes along the main road, resisting the temptation of the food on offer at the pub, and opting instead for lunch at a Burger King. Thorne felt a twinge of altogether more manageable guilt as they carried Whoppers, fries and onion rings to a table near the window and tucked in.

‘Sophie still smelling the fags on you?’ Thorne asked.

Holland nodded, grunting through a mouthful of food, but Thorne could see a wariness around his eyes at the mention of his girlfriend’s name. She had never been Thorne’s biggest fan. He couldn’t remember ever falling out with her, had not even met her that many times, but she had some idea that he was the sort of copper she never wanted Holland to turn into. Whatever she might think of him, it was clear to Thorne that the woman only had Holland’s best interests at heart. And that she was a pretty good judge of character.