Lazybones

SIX

From Kentish Town, Thorne took every rat-run he knew, cutting through side streets until he reached Highbury Corner and then heading east along the Balls Pond Road towards Hackney. Thorne took a quick glance at his A-Z. The florist's was tucked away somewhere behind Mare Street, a stone's throw from London Fields. This area of parkland stood alone in the midst of one of the most depressed areas in the city. It was once grazed by sheep, and prowled by highwaymen. Now, up-and-comers who directed videos or worked in advertising sat on benches sipping their skinny lattes, or walked their whippets across the green, doing their best to convince as geezers.

Thorne drove along streets bustling with Saturday morning shoppers. Noisy with the cries of greeting, the shouts of traders in the markets. And every few hundred yards, a look on a face or a hand thrust into a pocket that Thorne recognised as the signs of an altogether different kind of business.

Here, as in a dozen other boroughs, street-crime was out of control. Phone-jacking was virtually a form of social interaction and if you walked around with a personal stereo, you were a tourist who couldn't read a street map.

These days, the highwaymen prowled in gangs.

So the powers-that-be, in their infinite wisdom and desire for good press, were targeting areas like Hackney, piloting schemes that would involve the youth of an area. Thorne had read a report of one such scheme involving a couple of earnest young officers trading in the blue serge for hooded tops, and getting down with the kids in a local community centre. One had asked a thirteen-year-old gang member if he could think of ways he might avoid getting into trouble with the police. The kid had answered without a trace of irony. 'Wear a balaclava.'

It was a small place, sitting between a minicab firm and a locksmith's. The shop front was pleasingly old fashioned; the window display minimalist, the name painted in a green, creeping ivy design on a plain cream background.

BLOOMS.

Inside, the shop was lit by candles. There was classical music playing quietly in the background. There wasn't a single flower Thorne recognised…

'Are you looking for something in particular?' A man, thirty or so, with a paperback in his hand, stood behind a small wooden counter. Thorne moved towards him, smiling. 'Do people not buy daffs any more? Roses, chrysanthemums…?'

A woman carrying an enormous assortment of flowers stepped through a door at the back of the shop. She looked to be in her mid thirties. As soon as she spoke, Thorne recognised the voice – gabbling, confident, amused. It was clear that Eve Bloom had recognised him as well.

'Well, we can get that sort of specialised stuff in if you want, Mr. Thorne, but it will be very expensive…'

He laughed, sizing her up in a few seconds. Though her hands stayed busy among the stems she was carrying, he could tell that she was doing the same.

She was short, maybe five feet two, with blond hair held up by a large wooden clip. She wore a brown apron over jeans and a sweatshirt. Her face was dotted with freckles, and the smile revealed a gap between her two top teeth.

Thorne fancied the pants off her on sight.

The man behind the counter had picked up a notepad. 'Shall I put in an order, Eve? For the roses and those other things…?'

She put down the arrangement, lifted the apron over her head, smiled gently at him. 'No, I don't think so, Keith.' She turned to Thorne. 'I thought we could go to this great little tea-room just around the corner. Cream teas to die for. What do you think? We've got the weather for it after all. We can pretend we're in Devon or somewhere…'

As they strolled, she talked virtually constantly. 'Keith helps me out on a Saturday morning. He's fantastic with flowers, and the customers are very fond of him. Rest of the week I can manage the place on my own, but Saturday, early, that's when I have to make up most of the wedding arrangements, get ahead on the paperwork, accounts and what have you. Anyway, sod it! Today, Keith can keep an eye on things for an hour or so while we pig out. He's not a genius, bless him, but he works his socks off for.., well, for bugger all, if I'm honest.'

'What does Keith do the rest of the time?' Thorne said. 'When you're not exploiting him.'

Eve smiled and shrugged. 'Don't really know, to be honest. I think he has to look after his mother a lot. Maybe she's well off, because he never seems to be short. He's certainly not working in my shop for the money, not on what I can afford to pay him. God, I am so gasping for a cup of tea…'

The tea-room was kitsch beyond belief, with check tablecloths, art deco tea-sets and Bakelite radios dotted around on shelves and window ledges. The cream tea for two arrived almost instantly. ' Eve poured Earl Grey for herself, monkey tea for Thorne. She lathered jam and clotted cream on to her scone, grinned across the table.

'Listen, when I'm eating is probably the best chance you'll have to get a word in, so I should take your chance if I were you. I know I talk way too much…'

'The man who left the message on your answering machine, has he been in touch with you again?' She looked at him, confused. 'Follow up question,' Thorne explained. 'Justify the expenses claim, like you suggested. Bit of a long shot, but it seemed as good a question as any…

She cleared her throat. 'No, Detective Inspector, I'm afraid that I never heard from the man again.'

'Thank you. If you think of anything else you will get in touch, won't you? And I needn't tell you that we'd prefer it if you didn't leave the country…'

She laughed and pushed the last piece of a scone into her mouth. When she'd finished it she looked straight at him, raising a hand to shield her eyes against the sunlight that streamed in through the picture window. 'I take it you haven't caught him yet?' Thorne looked back at her, still eating. 'Did he kill somebody?'

Thorne swallowed. 'I'm sorry, I shouldn't…'

'I'm just putting two and two together, really.' She leaned back in her chair. 'I know it's a man, because I've heard his voice, and you told me you were with the Serious Crime Group, so I'm guessing that you're not after this bloke because he hasn't taken his library books back.'

Thorne poured himself another cup of tea. 'Yes, he did kill some body. No, we haven't caught him yet.'

'Are you going to?'

Thorne poured her a cup…

'Why me?' she said. 'Why did he pick me to order the wreath from?'

'I think he picked a name at random,' Thorne said. They'd found a tattered Yellow Pages in the cupboard beneath the bedside table. It had been covered in fingerprints. Thorne doubted any belonged to the killer. 'He just let his fingers do the walking.'

She pulled a face. 'I knew I shouldn't have stumped up for that bloody box-ad…'

Though she talked twice as much, and ten times as quickly as he did, Thorne still talked more, and more easily, in the hour or so that followed than he could remember doing to almost anybody for a long time. To any woman, certainly…

'When's the wedding?' Eve asked, as their plates were cleared away. Thorne was struck then by how much ground they'd covered and how quickly. 'A week today. God, I'd rather stick needles in my eyes…

'Do you not get on with your cousin?'

Thorne smiled at the waitress as she popped the bill down on the table. 'I barely know him. Probably wouldn't recognise him if he walked in here. Just family dos, you know…'

'Right. You choose your friends, but you can't choose your relatives.'

'Yours as bad as mine, then?' '

She brushed a few stray crumbs from the tabletop into her hand, emptied it on to the floor. 'Is he the same sort of age as you? Your cousin?'

'No, Eileen's a lot younger than my dad, and she had Trevor pretty late. He's still only early thirties, I think…'

'What are you?'

'How old, you mean?' She nodded. Thorne opened his wallet, dropped fifteen pounds on top of the bill. 'Forty-two. Forty-three in… fuck, in ten days.'

She clipped up a few stray hairs that had tumbled loose. 'I won't say that you don't look it, because that always sounds so false, but looking at you, I'd say that they were forty-three pretty interesting years.'

Thorne nodded. 'I'm not going to argue, but just so you know… I don't mind about the sounding-false thing.'

She smiled, put on a pair of small, almond-shaped sunglasses.

'Forty then. Late thirties at a push.'

Thorne stood up, pulling his leather jacket from the chair behind him. 'I'll settle for that…'

Back at the shop they swapped business cards, shook hands and stood together, a little awkwardly, in the doorway. Thorne looked around.

'Maybe I should get a plant or something…'

Eve bent down and picked up what looked like a miniature metal bucket. A cactus-like plant sprouted from a layer of smooth white pebbles. She handed it to him. 'Do you like this?'

Thorne was far from sure. 'What do I owe you?'

'Nothing. It's an early birthday present.'

He studied it from every angle. 'Right. Thanks…'

'It's an aloe vera plant.'

Thorne nodded. Over her shoulder, he could see Keith watching them closely from behind the counter. 'So I should be all right for shampoo…'

'There's a gel in the leaves, very good for cuts and scrapes.'

Thorne looked at the fierce-looking spikes growing along the edges of the plant's sword-shaped leaves. "That'll come in handy.'

They stepped out on to the pavement, the slight awkwardness returning. Thorne noticed a silver scooter parked by the side of the shop – one of the latest Vespa's, based on the classic design. He nodded towards it. 'Yours?'

She shook her head. 'God, no. That's Keith's.' She pointed to the other side of the road. 'That's me over there…'

Thorne looked across the road at the grubby white van behind which he'd parked the Mondeo. The name of the shop was painted on its side, in the same creeping-ivy design as was on the shop front.

'The name certainly fits,' he said.

She laughed. 'Right. Like being an undertaker called De'Ath. What else could I do? Flowers are the only thing I can think of that bloom

…'

Thorne could think of several other things, but he shook his head, not wanting to say anything that might spoil a nice afternoon. 'No, you're right,' he said.

Thinking…

Bruises. Tumours. Bloodstains…

For the fourth time in the last hour, Welch was answering the same stupid set of questions.

'Date of birth?'

Maybe the officers just passed the list between themselves. You'd have thought that at least one of them could have come up with something more interesting…

'Mother's maiden name?'

But no. Same tired old teasers designed to catch out the impostor. The process had gone unchanged for many years but these days they really weren't taking any chances. Not since the incident a couple of months earlier. A couple of Pakis in a prison up north had swapped places on release day and the silly bastards had let the wrong one out. Several screws had blown their pensions that day and, once the jungle drums had finished beating, given every con in the country a fucking good laugh…

'Do you have any tattoos?'

'Can I ask the audience?'

'You want to be a smartarse, Welch, we can start the whole thing over again…'

Welch smiled and answered the questions. He wasn't going to do anything silly at this stage of the game. Each door he walked through, each successfully completed series of questions, each tick on a chart took him one step further away from the centre of the place. One step closer to the final door.

Answering pointless questions and signing his name over and over. Taking receipt of his travel warrant and discharge grant. Taking back his property. The battered wallet, the wristwatch, the ring of yellow metal. Always 'yellow metal'. Never 'gold' in case the bastards lose it…

Then through another door and on to another screw, and all this one gets to say to him is 'goodbye'.

Welch walked away towards the gate. He moved slowly, savouring every step, seconds away from the moment when he would hear the clang of the heavy door behind him and feel the heat of the day on his face. And look up at a sun the colour of yellow metal.

For Thorne and Hendricks, a Saturday night in front of the television with beer and a takeaway curry was a regular pleasure. For nine months of the year there was football to watch, to argue about.

Tonight, the start of the new season still seven weeks away, they would probably watch a film. Or just sit through whatever was on until, a couple of cans in, they stopped really caring. Maybe they would just put some music on and talk.

It was nearly nine o'clock and the light was only just starting to fade. They walked down Kentish Town Road, away from the restaurant and back towards Thorne's place. Both wore jeans and a T-shirt though Thorne's were far and away) the baggier and less eye-catching. Hendricks carried a plastic bag, heavy with cans of lager, while Thorne took responsibility for the curry. The Bengal Lancer delivered, but it was a nice evening for a walk and there was the added attraction of a cold pint of Kingfisher while they'd waited, the smell coming from the kitchens sharpening the edges of their appetites.

'Why the rape?' Thorne asked suddenly.

Hendricks nodded. 'Right. Good move. Let's get the shoptalk out the way – you know, the rape and murder stuff-then we can relax and enjoy Casualty…'

Thorne ignored the sarcasm. 'Everything else, so well planned, so meticulously done. He takes no chances. He strips the bed even after he's killed Remfry on the floor. Takes everything away to make sure he leaves nothing of himself behind…'

'Nothing strange about not wanting to get caught.'

'No, but it was all so careful. Ritualised almost. Whether it happened before or after the murder, I don't see the rape as part of that. Maybe he just snapped at some point, lost it…'

'I can't see it, myself. The killer didn't just go mental and do it without thinking. He knew what he was doing. He wore a condom, so he was still wary, still in control…'

There were dozens of people gathered outside the Grapevine pub. They spilled across the pavement, laughing and drinking, enjoying the weather. Hendricks was forced to drop behind Thorne as they stepped into the road to skirt round the crowd.

'You think the rape wasn't part of the plan?' Hendricks was abreast of Thorne again. 'You think he just decided to do it once he'd got there?'

'No, I think he planned the whole thing. The rape just seems…'

'It was more violent than most, I agree, but rape's hardly delicate, is it?'

An old man waiting at a zebra crossing to cross the road caught just enough of the conversation. He jerked his head around and, ignoring the signal to cross, watched them walk away. A frustrated driver waiting at the crossing glared at the old man and leaned on his horn.

'I'm not sure why it bothers me,' Thorne said. 'It's a murder investigation but it's the rape part that feels significant…'

'You think the Miler was making a point?'

'Don't you?' Hendricks shrugged and nodded, heaved the bag up and slid a protective arm underneath. 'Right,' Thorne said. 'So why is the simple grudge scenario not playing out…?'

They walked on past the sandwich bar and the bank. Music was coming from behind open windows, drifting out of bars and down from roof terraces. Rap and blues and heavy metal. To Thorne, the atmosphere on the street seemed as relaxed as he could remember. Warm weather did strange things to Londoners. On sweaty, rush-hour tubes, tempers shortened as temperatures rose. Later, When it got a few degrees cooler and people had a drink in their hands, it was a different story…

Thorne smiled grimly. He knew it was only a small window of opportunity. Later still, when darkness fell and the booze began to kick in, the Saturday night soundtrack would become a little more familiar.

Sirens and screaming and breaking glass…

As if on cue, as Hendricks and Thorne walked past the late-night grocers, two teenagers, standing outside, began to push each other. It might have been harmless, it might have been the start of something. Thorne stopped, took a step back. 'Oi…'

The taller of the two turned and looked Thorne up and down, still clutching a fistful of the other's blue Hilfiger shirt. He was no more than fifteen. 'What's your fucking problem?'

'I don't have a problem,' Thorne said.

The shorter one shook himself free and turned square on to Thorne. 'You will have in a minute if you don't piss off…'

'Go home,' Thorne said. 'Your mum's probably worried.'

The taller one sniggered; but his mate was less amused. He looked quickly up and down the street. 'You want me to smack a couple of your teeth out?'

'Only if you want me to nick you,' Thorne said. Now they both laughed. 'You a fucking copper, man? No way…'

'OK,' Thorne said. 'I'm not a copper. And you're just a couple of innocent young scallywags minding your own business, right? Nothing I should have to worry about, you know, if I were a police officer, in any of your pockets.' He saw the eyes of the taller boy flick towards those of his friend. 'Maybe I should check though, just to be on the safe side…'

Thorne leaned, smiling, towards them. Hendricks stepped forward and hissed in his ear. 'Come on, Tom, for fuck's sake…'

A girl, two or three years older, walked out of the shop. She handed each of the boys a can of Tennent's Extra, opened one herself. 'What's going on?'

The boy in the blue shirt pointed at Thorne. 'Reckons he's a copper, says he's going to arrest us.'

The girl took a noisy slug of beer. 'Nah… he's not going to arrest anybody.' She pointed with the can towards the bag Thorne was holding.

'Doesn't want to let his fucking dinner go cold…'

More laughter. Hendricks put a hand on Thorne's shoulder.

Thorne carefully put the bag on the ground. 'I'm not hungry any more. Now turn out your pockets…'

'You love this, don't you?' the girl said. 'Have you got a hard-on?'

'Turn out your pockets.'

The boys stared at him, cold. The girl had another swig of beer. Thorne took a step towards them and then they moved. The shorter boy stepped round his friends and away, running a step or two before slowing, regaining his composure. The girl moved away more slowly, dragging the taller of the boys by the sleeve. They stared at Thorne as they went, walking away backwards up the street. The girl lobbed her empty can into the road and shouted back at Thorne..

'Poofs! Fucking queers…'

Thorne lurched forward to chase after them but Hendricks's hand, which had never left his shoulder, squeezed and held on. 'Just leave it.'

'No.'

'Forget it, calm down…'

He yanked his shoulder free. 'Little fuckers…'

Hendricks stepped in front of Thorne, picked up the bag and held it out to him.

'What are you more pissed off about, Tom? The fact that I was called a queer? Or that you were?'

Unable to answer the question, Thorne took the bag and they carried on walking. They veered almost immediately right on to Angler's Lane, a one-way street that would bring them out close to Thorne's flat. This narrow cut-through to Prince of Wales Road had once been a small tributary off the River Fleet, now one of London's 'lost' underground rivers. Here, when Victoria took the throne, local boys would fish for carp and trout, before the water became so stinking and polluted that no fish could survive, and it had to be diverted beneath the earth, confined and hidden away in a thick iron pipe. Now, as Thorne walked home along the course of the lost river, it seemed to him that nearly two centuries later the stench was just as bad.

By a little after ten, Hendricks was fast asleep on the sofa, and likely to remain so well into Sunday morning. Thorne tidied up around him, switched off the TV and went into the bedroom. He got no reply from the flat. She answered her mobile almost immediately.

'It's Thorne. I hope it's not too late. I remembered from the sign on the door of the shop that you weren't open on Sundays, so I thought you might…'

'It's fine. No problem…'

Thorne lay back on the bed. He thought that she sounded pretty pleased to hear from him.

'I wanted to say thanks,' he said. 'I enjoyed today.'

'Good. Me too. Want to do it again?'

During the short pause that followed, Thorne looked up at the cheap, crappy lampshade, listened to her laughing quietly. There was a noise he couldn't place in the background. 'Bloody hell,' he said. 'You don't waste a lot of time…'

'What's the point? We only saw each other a few hours ago and you're ringing up, so you're obviously pretty keen.'

'Obviously…'

'Right, well, tomorrow's for sleeping and I'm busy in the evening. So, how keen would you say you are, really? On a scale of one to ten…'

'Er… how does seven sound?'

'Seven's good. Any less and I'd've been insulted and more would have been borderline stalker. Right then, what about breakfast on Monday? I know a great caff..'

'Breakfast?'

'Why not? I'll meet you before work.'

'OK, I'll probably have to be at work about nine-ish, so…'

Eve laughed. 'I thought you were keen, Thorne! We're talking about when I start work. Half past five, New Covent Garden flower market…'

17 JULY, 1976

It was more than half an hour since he'd heard the noises. The grunting and the shouting and the sounds of glass shattering. He heard her footsteps as she moved around, from her bedroom across that creaky floorboard that he'd never got around to fixing, into the bathroom and back again. He spent that half-hour willing himself to get up off the settee and see what had happened. Not moving. Needing to build up some strength, some control before he could venture upstairs…

Sitting in front of the television, wondering how much longer this was going to go on. The doctor had said that if she kept taking the tranquilisers, then things would settle down, but there was no sign of that happening. In the meantime, he was having to do all the stuff that needed doing. Everything. She was in no state to go to the shops or to the school. Christ, it had been 'over a week since she'd last come downstairs.

Walking across to the foot of the stairs, stiff and slow as a Golem… Listening to it, watching it, feeling it all come apart. They'd given him the time off work, but the sick pay wasn't going to last for ever and she was contributing nothing and now the debts were growing as thick and fast as the suspicion. Mushrooming, like the doubts that sprouted in every damp, dark corner of their lives; had been, ever since that moment when the foreman of the jury had stood and cleared his throat. He walked into the bedroom, feeling the carpet crunch beneath his feet. He glanced down at a dozen, distorted reflections of himself in the shards of broken mirror, then across to where she lay, no more than a lump beneath the blankets. He turned and walked back the way he'd come. Back across the creaky floorboard.

In the bathroom, he skidded in the puddles of ivory face-cream. He stepped across the piss-coloured slicks of perfume. He kicked away the broken bottles into every corner.

So much that was designed to smell alluring, desirable, mingled unnaturally on floor and walls, making him heave… He moved across to the sink, afraid he would retch. He found it filled with the contents of the cabinet that stood empty above it. Blusher and lipstick and eye-shadow ground into the porcelain. Moisturiser clogging the plughole like poisonous waste. Powder and shampoo and bath oil, thrown and poured and sprinkled. The edges of her fancy soaps blunted against the walls. Dents in the plasterboard, pink as babies, blue as bruises. The mirror cracked, and spattered with nail varnish, red as arterial spray…

He ran a tap into the perfumed swamp, splashed water on to his face. He looked around at her handprints in talcum, the finger trails dragged through brightly coloured body lotion. Hints of herself left behind in everything she was trying to discard.

She'd been fine until they'd found her out, hadn't she? Fine with the knowledge of what she'd done as long as it stayed just between her and Franklin. Now the guilt was eating at her, wasn't it? Sending her fucking mental or making her pretend that she was, it didn't really matter which. Half a minute later he was walking back down the stairs, thinking, She lied, she lied, she lied, she lied…

She. Lied.