Lifeless - 5 (41 page)

Somebody spoke to him. He said something back. He stuck something tasteless into his mouth, glanced at his watch.

He needed a little time on his own. Just half an hour or so, for a coffee and a bar of chocolate. To gather himself before the adventure started.

Thorne looked up to see Hol and pushing through the tables towards him. He could see by his face that Hol and was having about as good a time as he was. The fact that he'd been stuck in a corner with Derek Lickwood couldn't have helped.

'Thanks for that,' Hol and said, squeezing in between Thorne and Hendricks.

'Privilege of rank, Hol and. I get to inform the next of kin, you have to talk to DCI Dickwood. Did he do that thing of looking over your head while he's talking to you?'

Hol and smiled and shook his head. 'He's such a wanker. Kept having little digs about Palmer escaping. Asked if you'd ever worked for Group 4.'

Hendricks snorted into his Guinness. Thorne turned to him. 'Shut it.' 'He's off,' Hol and said. Thorne looked across in time to see Lickwood at the door on the far side of the room. Just before stepping through it on to the street, he turned and cocked his head towards Thorne. It was a hard expression to read, but Thorne would have put good money on smug.

'I've got a good idea why he was here, though,' Hol and said. 'He seemed very disappointed that DS McEvoy wasn't around. A bit confused...'

Hendricks enjoyed this sort of intrigue hugely. 'What? Lickwood has the hots for McEvoy?'

'Oh yeah, fancies the pants off her.'

'What did you tel him?' Thorne asked.

'I just sort of ducked it real y, made out like I didn't know where she was myself. He was pissed off about it, though, definitely.'

Hendricks downed the rest of his Guinness. 'She's a popular girl is McEvoy.'

'That's true,' Thorne said. 'Problem is, I'm not sure she likes herself very much.'

If Thorne had had a problem reading the expression on Lickwood's face, the one on Dave Hol and's at that moment was wel beyond his reach. He stared at it for a second or two and then turned away, his heart sinking at the screech of feedback from across the room. Some idiot had got hold of a microphone.

'It's Jesmond,' Hendricks announced.

Thorne knew a cue to leave when he heard one. 'Come on, Hol and.

Let's get the hel out of here.'

'Where are we going?'

'Happily, I have a pressing engagement in Colindale with the Directorate of Professional Standards. You can hold my hand.'

As the first distorted platitudes rang across the bar, Thorne and Hol and pushed their way towards the exit. Thorne wondered whether the beer on his breath might count against him at his meeting.

Behind him, Hol and was remembering how cold it had been at half past three that morning. Sitting naked on the edge of his bed. Whispering into his mobile with Sophie stirring next to him, disturbed by the phone, but not ful y awake yet.

McEvoy's voice had been strained, garbled.., raised just enough to reach him over the noise in wherever the hel she was cal ing from; as heartbreaking a mixture of helplessness and arrogance as he could ever have imagined.

'I'm fine. OK? I just wanted to tel you that. I real y am absolutely fine.'

TWENTY-SEVEN

The voice was getting quieter, line by line.

She hadn't slept in nearly thirty-six hours. She hadn't been straight for a good while longer. It was hard to work out exactly which of these things was responsible for the various things her body was now subject to every few minutes. She was overtired. She was shaking. She was out of it. She was wired, hysterical, comatose, terrified, buzzing, fearless...

The night before, as soon as Hol and had gone, she'd done the last of the coke in the flat and rushed to her computer. She'd written a few e-mails, received a few and then she'd gone out to score. Walking, running most of the way, she hadn't stepped on any of the cracks in the pavement, as per usual. That way she knew that her dealer would be there, that he'd have something for her.

For the rest of that night she'd been awake - drinking and chain smoking, opening up the wrap made from a folded lottery ticket, chopping out a line every half an hour or so. Since the sun had come up, she'd been doing one every fifteen minutes.

The fucker was ripping her off, must be. She'd always got four lines out of a quarter, and now, suddenly, she was getting no more than three. She was needing to make the lines thicker.

The bastard must be cutting her stuff...

Stil , cut or not, the stuff was doing the trick. It was silencing the voice. The voice in her head - so much posher and more attractive than the one that came out of her mouth - had been growing quieter with each new line. The voice that told her she was stupid, that what she was planning was insane, that she was risking her life. Each hit was turning it down another notch.

There were other voices she could stil hear, that she needed to hear. Hol and's voice, tel ing her she couldn't do her job any more. Her mother's voice. The voice she had never heard, but which she imagined when she read the e-mails. These were the voices that, for the time being, she didn't want to tune out, that were making her do this thing, that she would soon silence once and for al .

A wave of rage swept over her as she imagined them al taking the credit for what she was going to do; praising her initiative and then taking al the glory. Fuck that. She imagined Hol and coming back to her, walking out on his dim girlfriend and trying to start things up again...

She moved to the table. The empty vodka bottle. The empty wrap. Fuck, fuck, fuck . . .

She opened up the lottery ticket, pressed it flat on the table and licked. She got down on her knees and began dabbing at specks on the carpet, rubbing equal amounts of cocaine, dirt and dead skin into her gums.

Christ alive, how much had she got through? Bastard must have cut it half and half. Must have...

She lit a cigarette, put on her coat.

There wasn't a great deal of time. There was stil that one crucial piece of information she needed. The one thing he'd held back while he was sending his cryptic little messages. He thought he was being so clever this last week or so, but he had no idea how good she was. None of them did. She was one step ahead of them, al the time. And she was one step ahead of him.

She sent an e-mail, and when she didn't get an immediate reply, she sent another, tel ing him she had to go )ut. Tel ing him how he could contact her. It was the only thing she could do, other than sit and wait until lunch-time which was when he usual y came on line. She couldn't wait another second.

She grabbed her bag, and after making sure there was nobody on surveil ance outside, she closed the door behind her, shivering as she stepped into the cold air.

McEvoy walked quickly away down the greasy pavement, making quite sure she didn't step on any of the cracks.

'How did it go?'

Hol and had been waiting for Thorne in reception, chewing the fat with an old mate on duty behind the desk. He waved goodbye as he and Thorne pushed out through the doors and started the ten-minute walk back to Becke House.

What little sun there was up there was having no luck breaking through a solid blanket of cloud. The sky was the colour of pewter.

There were already one or two cars with sidelights on. It was a little after three o'clock. 'How was it real y?'

'I think I got lucky,' Thorne said. 'A pair of rubber-heelers with a sense of humour.'

Hol and smiled. Rubber-heelers. You couldn't hear the buggers

coming. 'What was it that they found funny... ?'

It hadn't begun wel .

DCI Col ins (short and overweight) and DI Manning (tal and overweight) did not look like they enjoyed a laugh. Both had that strange expression - a mixture of boredom and seething resentment which Thorne had previously seen only on the faces of men standing on Oxford Street with signs reading GOLF SALE.

Manning had shuffled papers while Col ins had leaned forward across the table to deliver the caution. It had begun and ended with much the same words that Thorne had used to caution Martin Palmer. In the middle, they had detailed the neglect of duty - the procedural

lapse that had al owed Palmer to escape - speaking slowly and seriously. These officers were doing their job of work so much better than Thorne had done his.

'I'd like a number of other serious incidents noted for the record,' Thorne had said. 'Incidents where I neglected my duty.'

Manning had thrown a sideways glance at Col ins and then at the tape recorder to check that the spools were turning. 'Go ahead, Inspector.'

Thorne had cleared his throat. 'I have, on a number of occasions, farted without apologising, and though I have never actual y appeared in The Bil , a woman who was drunk told me I looked a bit like the bloke who plays DI Burnside...'

Manning and Col ins had looked at each other and then pissed themselves.

'So, how did it finish up?' Hol and asked. They were approaching the pub where, doubtless, Serious Crime was stil busy inside, pursuing various lines of enquiry.

Thorne wasn't certain what would happen next, but for a change he had decided to think positive. 'I'm not exactly off the hook, but I don't reckon they're sorting me out a uniform just yet.'

Hol and stopped and nodded across the road towards the pub. 'Are we going back in?'

Thorne kept on walking, shouted back over his shoulder. 'You can do what you like, Hol and, I'm going to go and pick the car up. I thought I'd go and see how McEvoy's getting on. Find out if her mother's any better...'

At three thirty, they pul ed up outside Sarah McEvoy's flat in Wembley.

Thorne got out of the car and walked up the steps to the front door. He turned and looked at Hol and who was stil sitting in the passenger seat, staring forwards. 'Come on, Dave ...'

Hol and got out while Thorne rang the bel . He arrived next tq him as Thorne rang again.

Nothing.

Thorne took a step back, peered to his left at the dark blue curtains drawn across the bay window. 'Is that her flat?' He'd picked McEvoy up outside the place on a few occasions, dropped her off on a couple more, but he'd never been inside.

Hol and's answer was non-committal. 'Maybe she's in bed,' he said.

Thorne shrugged, thrust his hands into his jacket pockets and trudged back down towards the car.

Hol and watched Thorne moving away, wrestling with it, knowing how easy it would be to jog gently down the steps after him. His voice when he spoke was louder than he'd intended it to be - more urgent. 'I think we should go in...'

Thorne turned, twirling the car keys around a finger. 'I don't think I want the Funny Firm doing me for breaking and entering as wel , Dave...'

'I've got a key,' Hol and said.

Thorne came up the steps two at a time and took hold of the arm

that was already reaching forward to push a key into the lock.

'We'l need to talk about this, Hol and...'

It was as dark and gloomy inside the flat as it was outside on the street. As wel as the curtains at the front, in McEvoy's bedroom there was a blind pul ed down over the back window, the one that looked out on to the garden.

'Wel , she's not asleep,' Hol and said, coming back into the living room. Thorne wasn't listening. He was staring at a dozen reflections of himself. He counted at least a dozen of them.

Mirrors were suspended from the ceiling, propped up on the floor, leaning against the wal s at a variety of strange angles. Heavy and ornate, plain and unframed, round, square, al highly polished...

'What the fuck is this... ?'

Hol and moved past him to the window, raised the blind, then turned around. He opened his mouth to answer the question but nothing came out.

Thorne moved slowly around the room, every glance bringing some new reflection, some bizarre perspective on himself. The back of a leg, the top of his head. His fading bruises appeared straight on and profiled at the same time.

On the table, Thorne saw another, smal er mirror, and the creased

lottery ticket. He knew at once what he was looking at. 'How long have you known about it?' he asked. 'About three weeks.' 'You're a fucking idiot...'

Hol and raised a hand to shut Thorne up. Yes, he was a fucking idiot, he was much much worse, but he had to stop Thorne going off on one. Not now. He could bow his head and accept the bol ocking another time. Now, there was something else...

'Sir, I think McEvoy's in some sort of trouble.'

'Some sort... ?'

'Real trouble.' Hol and couldn't say why he was worried. He didn't know what it was that was nagging at him, couldn't explain where the feeling came from. It made him shiver and it kept him awake, and he needed to tel someone. It was there in McEvoy's eyes and the things

she said, and the way she'd been acting for a while. It was as if she had a secret. Another secret... 'What?' Thorne said.

Hol and shook his head, looked around the room, searching desperately for something that might bring this indistinct unease into sharp relief. His gaze settled on the computer.

.The look on McEvoy's face a few days before, when he'd walked in to the office and found her on the Internet. Panic, and something else. Defiance? Triumph... ?

Thorne watched Hol and walk across, pul up a chair, hit the button to wake the machine up.

'What are you doing?'

'I'm going to check her emails.'

'You think she's been ordering drugs by email?'

'No ... maybe. I don't think this is about the coke ...' Hol and

began moving the mouse, clicking, opening windows.

'Don't you need some sort of password?'

'I would if I was actual y going to sign on to her account, but I should be able to check her filing cabinet - see what she's been sending out, what she's received...'

Thorne nodded, letting Hol and get on with it, whatever it was. Cocaine. Thorne had suspected as much. He'd known a few coppers who liked a sniff. It was usual y the older ones who should have known better, the ones that couldn't be doing with Ecstasy because it involved dancing. Whatever their reason for doing it, some of them got seriously messed up.