Mark Billingham - Death Message

He heard her voice, and his own.

And how bent does what you’ve been doing make you? Or what I did last night make me?

We haven’t murdered anyone.

The image dissolved, drifted, and he walked on, happy enough. When it came to Arkan Zarif, getting the right result was the only thing that mattered.

Waiting, Thorne looked at his watch many times. It was seventeen minutes from when he’d left the restaurant, to the moment when his phone rang.

His old mobile phone.

He took it from his pocket but didn’t answer. Let it go to voicemail.

Marcus Brooks, calling the number he’d been given. Saying what Thorne had told him to say.

Thorne listened to the message, knowing that he was not the only one that would be doing so, then walked back behind the parade of shops and down towards the service entrance.

He met Brooks at the end of the alleyway.

‘What did he say?’ Thorne asked.

The light from the streetlamp made Brooks look even more jaundiced. ‘He said “please”. Not for too long, though.’ He carefully handed Thorne his prepay mobile. The one Thorne had left behind on the counter when he had turned up the volume on the CD player. The one which Brooks had then picked up.

Thorne looked at the screen. The phone’s voice recorder function was still running, as it had been for the last twenty-odd minutes.

‘The names of the men who ran Angela and Robbie over are on there,’ Brooks said. He looked down at his training shoes for a second. ‘And the men who set fire to your father’s house.’

A lurch in the stomach like a spasm of indigestion. Rage and relief cancelling each other out. Nothing more, for now.

‘I made sure he knows we’ve got it,’ Brooks said. ‘He’s not going to be telling anyone we were there.’

Thorne nodded. ‘We should get going.’

Brooks swung the plastic bag as they walked back on to Green Lanes and across to where Thorne had left the BMW. Brooks climbed into the back. Thorne pressed a hand into the small of his back to help him inside, then stood, leaning against the car. Stared at the phone for a few seconds before he slipped it into his pocket.

‘Thank you’ seemed inappropriate. The stuff about being under arrest would come later.

He took the car across the main road and pulled it round; drove at walking pace past the window of the restaurant. Arkan Zarif was shuffling slowly, painfully , towards the glass on his backside. It looked as though something had been stuffed into his mouth. Napkins, Thorne guessed.

‘You don’t know how much I wanted to kill him,’ Brooks said.

Thorne flicked his eyes to the rear-view, then back to the figure that was beginning to howl and bang on the restaurant’s window.

He knew very well.

It had not been easy to convince Brooks, or himself, but eventually it had been agreed that they should do whatever it took to get the necessary information, but no more. That Zarif would suffer far more behind bars. That they were being anything but merciful.

‘You’ve no… fucking idea,’ Brooks mumbled.

Thorne eased the car from the kerb and pointed it north, letting the thoughts settle in his mind as he picked up speed. Most of the story was already straight, and would be simple enough to tell. He would put the rest of it together on the way back to Colindale.

Marcus Brooks was asleep on the back seat by the time the car reached the first set of lights.

The Kard Kop checked, then raised over the top of the last player left in the hand. The thirty seconds ticked away, but at the death the other player folded what were almost certainly the winning cards, and, with nothing better than a pair of nines, The Kard Kop took down the pot.

‘I won,’ Louise shouted. ‘Forty dollars.’

Thorne walked across, looked at the screen as the next hand was dealt. Louise got a jack and a four, unsuited. She quickly folded and sat out of the game.

‘How much are you up tonight?’ Thorne asked.

‘A hundred and eighty-two dollars,’ Louise said.

‘Fuck…’

Not only had Louise picked up the game ridiculously quickly, she was already a better player than Thorne. Her game was aggressive without being reckless. And she was better at sussing out the real characters of the players around the table, able to see past their cartoon images.

She read them quicker than Thorne had read Marcus Brooks.

Better than he had read the police officer who had once called himself Squire.

Most importantly of all, win or lose, Louise knew when to walk away from the table.

‘You going to play for a bit?’

Thorne shook his head, so Louise logged off; wandered through to the kitchen to get the food started. Hendricks was bringing a new man for dinner, and Louise was cooking pasta.

Thorne followed and leaned against the kitchen door. ‘What do we know about this bloke of Phil’s?’

‘He’s a “cardiologist with a nice arse”,’ Louise said. ‘That was Phil’s first description anyway.’

‘That it?’

‘He seems nice.’

‘You’ve met him?’

‘Only the once. Listen, relax.’

‘I am relaxed.’

‘You’re friends,’ Louise said. ‘You’ll sort it out. If it’s any consolation, Phil’s just as nervous about seeing you.’

‘I’m fine.’

Shitting himself…

Thorne wandered back into the living room and across to the shelves of CDs, Louise’s and his own. He was feeling uncomfortable in a brand-new shirt from M &S. He hadn’t been bothered to iron out the creases. ‘Shall I stick some music on?’ he shouted.

There was a clatter of pans from the kitchen. ‘What?’

Thorne took out a copy of Wrecking Ball by Emmylou Harris, put the disc into the player, and scanned through to the Lucinda Williams song that was his favourite track on the album.

Louise appeared briefly in the doorway. ‘I should have started the sauce fifteen minutes ago,’ she said. She nodded towards the computer. ‘You lose all track of time once you’re into the game.’ She jabbed scissors into a pack of tortellini and turned back into the kitchen.

Humming along with the song…

It was halfway through December. Three weeks since Thorne had made his arrest; since Marcus Brooks had been charged with the murder of Raymond Tucker.

Brooks had made a full confession.

He had detailed the killings of Ricky Hodson and Martin Cowans, and while denying any involvement in the murder of Paul Skinner, he had confessed to the attempted murder of another senior police officer. DCI Keith Bannard was on life support in St Thomas’s Hospital. Had been since being struck by the car Marcus Brooks had been driving, shortly before Brooks had telephoned DI Tom Thorne, leaving a message to say where he was and expressing a desire to turn himself in.

No mention was made of an attack on the owner of a Turkish restaurant on the same evening as his arrest…

Louise carried through a handful of cutlery and dumped it on the small, pine table. Thorne got up from the sofa and began to lay out the place settings.

Through friends on Serious and Organised – all of whom had expressed amazement at the extent of Bannard’s criminal activities – Thorne had learned that Arkan Zarif had been discovered in the early hours of the morning by one of his sons, who had quickly called an ambulance. The police had been summoned by hospital staff, but Zarif had insisted that it had all been his own fault. Both of his knees had been smashed in a nasty fall, he said, after having had a little too much to drink.

Hearing this, Thorne had remembered Louise’s drug dealer, the one who had kidnapped himself and chopped off his own fingers; had thought about how much damage people seemed capable of doing to themselves in extreme circumstances. It was not an observation he had felt able to share with Louise, of course, however much she might have enjoyed it.