Mark Billingham - Death Message

When Thorne got home he suggested trying a new Thai place that had opened on Kentish Town Road, but Louise had other ideas. She had brought stuff round and seemed determined to cook. While she was sorting dinner, Thorne nipped out to fetch a bottle of wine.

Louise looked at the bottle when Thorne got back. Asked how much it had cost, and seemed pleased when he told her.

‘Cheap beer and expensive wine,’ she said. ‘That’s one of the things I liked about you first off.’

‘ One of the things?’

‘OK, the only thing,’ she said. ‘Now I come to think about it.’

They ate pasta at the small table in Thorne’s living room. Got through the wine, and listened to a June Carter Cash compilation Thorne had picked up for next to nothing on eBay.

‘That stuff the other night.’ Louise reached across for an empty plate.

‘What stuff?’ Thorne said, knowing perfectly well.

‘It didn’t mean that I wanted anything, you know? That I want to have a baby, now, this minute. But I don’t think there’s anything wrong in talking about it.’

‘It’s fine…’

‘It isn’t fine, because it obviously freaked you out. So, I just want to make sure we understand each other.’

‘Does this mean we need to get into the cheap beer?’

‘I’m serious.’

Louise explained that despite what had happened in bed that night, she really did not want to get pregnant. That wasn’t to say she wouldn’t want to have a child one day, but she had a career to put first for a few more years.

‘I look at someone like Yvonne Kitson,’ she said, ‘see her trying to juggle work around three kids, and I’m not sure I’d ever be able to do it.’

Thorne thought about Louise’s reaction when they’d talked about Kitson and he’d accused her of being jealous. He wondered if he’d touched even more of a nerve than he’d realised.

‘I’d be stupid to have a kid now.’

‘It’s fine,’ Thorne repeated.

‘You keep saying that, but I don’t think it is. I’m worried that you think I’m desperate for you to knock me up or something. That I’m some sort of nutter who’s going to stick pins in all your condoms or nick a pram from outside Tesco’s. Really, I’m happy with the way things are.’

‘Good. So am I,’ Thorne said.

‘Great. So that’s fine then.’

They moved from the table to the sofa, and when the album had finished they put the TV on and tried to lose themselves in something mindless. After fifteen minutes of saying nothing, though, Thorne wasn’t convinced that Louise was succeeding any more than he was.

She hit the mute button on the remote and was about to say something when the phone rang.

Thorne recognised the voice immediately.

‘How did you get my home number?’ he said. He pictured a glorified cupboard stuffed with recording equipment. A bored technician wearing headphones, ears pricking up on hearing his question.

‘Come on,’ Rawlings said. ‘If you wanted to get mine, how long would it take you?’

‘What do you want?’ Next to him, Louise was mouthing, Who is it ? ‘I’m in the middle of something.’

‘I could do with a chat. Just five minutes.’

‘Fine, but not this five.’

There was a pause. Thorne could hear Rawlings blowing out smoke; knew that he was swearing silently.

‘What about tomorrow?’

‘Fine. Call me then.’

‘Can we meet up?’

Louise was still asking. Thorne shook his head; he’d tell her in a minute. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing tomorrow. A lot of stuff happened today, and-’

‘What stuff?’

‘Right, you’ve had your chat…’

‘Come on. We can meet wherever’s easiest for you, all right? Five fucking minutes…’

Later, when Thorne was in the kitchen making tea, Louise shouted through from the living room: ‘What about you? Did you never think about kids?’

Thorne almost scalded himself. ‘Thought about it, yeah. Not for a while, though.’

‘Why did you and Jan never have them?’

Thorne had split from his ex-wife twelve years before, after ten years of marriage. They hadn’t spoken in a long while, and as far as he knew she was still living with the teacher she’d left him for. ‘We didn’t decide not to. It just never happened.’

There was a pause from the living room.

‘Did you try to find out why it wasn’t happening?’

Thorne took his time stirring the tea. ‘No, we didn’t talk about it.’ He shrugged as he said it, asking himself, as he had when Jan had left, if it might have been one of the reasons why she’d gone. The not having kids. The not talking about not having kids. Both.

‘It’s crazy how some couples bottle shit up,’ Louise said.

Thorne carried the drinks through, settled down next to her. ‘Stupid,’ he said.

She looked at him. ‘It’s important we don’t do that. That we talk about things.’

‘We are talking about things.’

‘Right.’ She flicked the TV on again. ‘It’s just a conversation, that’s all. I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t be able to talk about it. Isn’t it part of getting to know the other person?’

‘I think we know each other pretty well,’ Thorne said.

‘I’m just saying it should be like finding out all the other stuff, likes and dislikes, whatever. Where did you go to school? Where do you like to go on holiday? Do you think you might want to have kids one day?’

‘The first two are easier to answer.’

‘ One day .’ She squeezed his arm and said it nice and slow, making sure he got the point. ‘At some point in the future, maybe , so don’t panic, OK? I don’t even mean with me, necessarily. I’ll almost certainly have got pissed off with you and buggered off with someone else by then. It’s hypothetical, that’s all.’

‘OK.’

‘We’re just talking about the idea of kids, Tom. Why should that be scary?’

Thorne knew that she was right, in theory, but also knew it was not quite as simple as she was making out.

He wasn’t scared of vampires or zombies, in theory, but a well-made horror movie could still scare the shit out of him.

Davey Tindall looked up from his paper and eyed the two men at his window above off-the-shelf reading glasses.

‘Eight quid,’ he said, tearing off two tickets. He sighed when he saw the warrant cards; tossed the tickets into the bin and nodded towards the door that led through to the auditorium. ‘In you go then. Film’s already started, mind you.’

‘Does that really matter?’ Thorne asked. He peered at the poster taped below the box-office window. ‘I wouldn’t have thought Shy and Shaven has too much in the way of plot.’

Holland thanked Tindall for the offer, explaining that they weren’t from Clubs and Vice, looking for a freebie. Thorne told him where they were from and that they needed a word.

‘I was in with your lot the other day,’ Tindall said. ‘DC Stone and the other bloke, Asian…’

‘That was the other day. With two other officers. And before you spoke to Marcus Brooks.’

Tindall puffed out his cheeks, folded his paper.

‘Let’s go through to the back and put the kettle on,’ Thorne said.

The cinema was one of a string in Soho, all managed by a south London family who also owned clubs and massage parlours and ran a network of girls in and out of several of the city’s top hotels. Tindall had been on the payroll for years, doing a variety of jobs. He worked the box office, ferried girls around, collected the takings. He also passed a tip or two on to DCI Keith Bannard every once in a while, in exchange for cash and a Get Out of Jail Free card.