Good as Dead (28 page)
Bridges winced as Allen’s head crashed against the floor, then watched, fascinated, as the eyelids fluttered and the eyeballs rolled around like hard-boiled eggs. He waited until Allen’s chest had stopped heaving, then pulled himself up. He fetched a cloth and a bottle of spray-cleaner from the kitchen, then moved around the flat, carefully wiping down any surfaces he might have touched.
The heavy metal was still thumping from the speakers and he turned the volume back up, moving his head and hand in time to it as he sprayed and polished.
‘I’ll clean your place up good and proper, you fucking old woman.’
He wiped down the stereo and the CD case. He went into the kitchen, rooted in the bin and wiped down each of the empty beer cans. He wiped down the syringe that was still dangling from Allen’s arm then, last of all, he applied a delicate squirt to his tobacco tin. He would miss that, it had seen him through some hard times, but if everything was going to look kosher he would need to leave it behind and he knew these things had to be done properly.
The song was almost finished by the time he’d put the cleaning things back where he had found them, so he waited. He wheeled his arm around on the final chord, jumped in the air on the last deafening crash of drums and almost lost his balance. He steadied himself against a chair, giggling. It was very decent gear indeed and he was pretty far gone himself. He looked down at Allen’s body.
Way too good for pussies like that, anyway.
The dog was looking up at him from the sofa, tail going like a bastard and tongue lolling out. He thought he might get a puppy himself, thought about taking this one while he had the chance, then decided that would be a stupid move, all things considered.
He spent a few minutes rubbing the dog’s belly and tickling it behind the ears, then left.
He is lying in bed watching the news when he gets the call.
It’s one of his greatest pleasures, stretching out between clean sheets with a decent malt close at hand, greater even than the pleasure he gets from some of the bodies he shares his bed with now and again. That, however, is never more than a temporary arrangement, an hour or so to get what he needs, after which there is no company he craves but his own. He would certainly never dream of letting any of them stay the night. He has never so much as entertained such an idea. It’s not just that he could not bear to wake up next to one of them, he could not even contemplate going to sleep with anyone that close. An arm draped across him, or a foot against his own, someone else’s hot breath on the back of his neck.
Just the thought of it makes him shudder.
It’s not that he isn’t … tender. He prides himself on being a considerate lover, but he just prefers his own company when the sex is over and he always sends them home in a taxi with a little something extra in their pockets to spend on whatever drug lights their candle. They come looking for him, some of them, because they know they’ll be given a good time, in and out of the bedroom.
He is pleased that he has earned that sort of reputation.
He is watching the rolling news on Sky, which is nothing short of a godsend when something like this happens. Of course, it gets tedious after a while, with the same news – or lack of it – being tarted up a dozen different ways within the same programme, but it is oddly hypnotic nonetheless.
It will help him sleep, if nothing else.
There is one reporter standing just a few feet from the police cordon at one end of the street, a uniformed officer grim-faced behind him, while another – a young black woman, who is clearly the junior of the two – delivers her reports from outside the railway station, which is still closed of course. She occasionally talks to a disgruntled and barely literate commuter, but otherwise her screeching monologues have none of the drama commanded by her colleague. He has a face you can take seriously. He has coppers in shot as well as the occasional emergency vehicle, which always ramps up the excitement, such as it is.
He lies there and chuckles to himself.
There are, after all, only so many ways of saying that nothing whatsoever is happening.
He sips his malt and asks himself again what on earth the man inside the wretched little shop could possibly be
doing
this for. Yes, a few questions asked, but to what end? Is the man going to get his son back?
He takes another drink. Not going to happen.
Now the black woman is wittering on about ‘tension in the community’ and, as the phone rings, he decides that she could only have got the job because of some positive discrimination quota, and would be better off presenting children’s programmes …
‘Just watching the latest at Fags ’n’ Mags,’ he says.
‘What?’
‘The newsagent’s. These Indian places usually have some stupid name like that. Same as when they call a barber’s Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow! Bloody ridiculous.’
‘What’s happening?’
‘Silly bastard’s still waving his gun about at some poor policewoman. Nothing to get excited about.’
‘Yes, well, on a related matter—’
‘Oh stop talking like a ponce, will you?’ He sits up in bed, mildly irritated. He mutes the sound on the television. ‘I get enough of that at work every day.’
The man at the other end of the phone sniffs and says, ‘Fine. I just called to let you know that things have been sorted out. I thought you might like to know.’
‘Our Scottish friend earned his wages then?’
‘Well, I’ve only got his word for it, but he knows better than to try it on.’
‘And he was careful?’
‘Made a point of telling me just how careful he was.’
‘Good. As long as he’s careful enough to keep his own head down now he’s done what was asked of him.’
‘He’s got enough money to disappear, so there shouldn’t be a problem.’
‘I want this to be the end of it.’
‘Don’t you think I do?’
‘Where are you?’
The other man’s voice drops. ‘I’m at home. Downstairs.’
‘Get yourself off to bed, man, for God’s sake. Have a quiet wank, or better still give your wife a good seeing-to. Sounds like you need to relax.’
‘Shall we talk tomorrow?’
‘Well, I’ll be seeing you at the party, I presume?’
‘You think that’s a good idea?’
‘Like you said, things have been sorted out. We should enjoy ourselves a little.’ On the TV, the male reporter hands back to the studio. Behind the two suntanned anchors is a large picture of a smiling Javed Akhtar. ‘With any luck our newsagent friend will have done us all a favour and put that gun in his mouth by then. We can crack open a bottle of something.’
Thorne had woken several times in the night and, after a few minutes lying there in the dark, he had somehow managed to drift away again, but now his chest was tight and it felt as though his heart was pulsing hard and fast against the bone. He knew there was no chance of getting back to sleep now, because this time his phone was ringing.
‘We’ve got a body you might be interested in,’ Holland said.
‘I’m
always
interested.’
‘I stuck a flag-up on the PNC. Everyone we spoke to the last couple of days, just in case. The on-call DI in Hackney rang me ten minutes ago.’
Thorne tried to think. Who was in Hackney? He found himself smiling when it came to him. ‘Peter Allen?’
‘Dead as mutton.’
‘That’s a coincidence and a half.’
‘Isn’t it though?’
‘I’ll be about forty minutes,’ Thorne said. ‘Make sure the body stays where it is until I get there.’
While he dressed, the eight-thirty news bulletin on BBC London told him that traffic was building up on the A40 into town, that the Olympics were now seven billion pounds over budget and that there had been no significant developments overnight at the armed siege in Tulse Hill. Thorne had thought it best to check. He guessed that he would not be the first person Donnelly called if there had been.
Studying his reflection as he brushed his teeth, he realised that he had not shaved for the last couple of days. He had not showered either, but had gone heavy on the Right Guard and hoped he would get away with it.
Hendricks would be the first to let him know if he hadn’t.
He spat into the sink, then stared at himself again. He probably looked a little less worn out than he felt, but there wasn’t much in it. His hair was a good deal greyer these days, more of it on one side than the other, same as always, and creeping in at much the same rate that the line of his jaw was subsumed into flesh and the circles darkened into black smiles beneath his eyes. Hendricks had already mentioned all those things of course, had gone as far as giving him a selection of male grooming products the previous Christmas. They each remained unopened in the bathroom cabinet. It wasn’t that Thorne thought them in any way effeminate, rather that he was still unconvinced that any of them actually worked. It was a smart move on the part of cosmetics companies, he reckoned, to start ripping men off in the same way they had done for so long with women.
Men were every bit as vain after all, and probably a damn sight more gullible.
The toupée, Bruce? Trust me, it’s absolutely invisible.
He leaned in close to the mirror, a ragged rumble in his throat as he breathed. He reached up to wipe away the smear of condensation. Wasn’t this about the time that men his age were supposed to start looking distinguished? Maybe that was just architects and film directors, blokes that knew about wine and read books nobody had heard of. Most of the coppers he knew who were pushing fifty just looked … fucked.
Were
fucked.
Thorne walked back into the bedroom and picked up his leather jacket from the chair in the corner. He examined the dark stain on the front and wondered if buying a new one in exactly the same style and colour would count as a minor addition to his list of lifestyle changes. He shoved the tattered slab of Amin Akhtar paperwork into his briefcase, then carried it to the bathroom.
He tossed in the can of Right Guard and turned towards the front door.
Holland was waiting on the pavement and raised a hand in greeting as Thorne pulled up. The entrance to the block had been tented off and stood guarded by uniformed officers, statue-still behind the fluttering line of crime scene tape that ran around the edge of the front garden. Holland was already wearing a blue paper suit and, as soon as Thorne was out of the car, Holland handed him one of his own. Thorne tossed his jacket into the back seat of the BMW and clambered into the suit, a hand on Holland’s shoulder for balance, turning his face away from the small crowd of onlookers who stood watching from the other side of the street.
Nodding towards the newcomer and muttering to one another. Phones raised to snap pictures.
Some, Thorne knew, were waiting eagerly for a body – or better still, bodies – to be brought out, while others were looking around for cameras and faces they recognised, wondering who the star of the film was. The majority were almost certainly standing there purely because that’s what other people were doing.
It was probably the most popular that Peter David Allen had ever been.
‘Who found the body?’ Thorne asked.
Holland turned towards the block. ‘There was music playing all night. He had the same album on repeat at full volume, so the neighbours called the council.’
‘
He
being Allen?’
‘Well … possibly. Anyway, the council sent the noise pollution jobsworths round and eventually they called us. They ran the address through the PNC and when the flag came up, the local boys put the door in.’
‘No sign of forced entry?’
‘Apart from that one, no.’
‘What was it?’
‘What was what?’
‘The album.’
‘Slayer.
Hell Awaits
, if you want to get really specific.’
‘Definitely a suspicious death then,’ Thorne said. ‘Nobody in their right mind leaves that on repeat.’
‘You don’t think he could have overdosed accidentally then?’
‘Come on, you’ve seen his records.’ Thorne bent down to pull on the paper bootees that he hated so much. ‘No record of intravenous drug use. Not so much as an arrest for anything even drug-related. To be honest, even if he’d been a Premier League junkie, I’d still think it was iffy the day after you spoke to him.’
Holland nodded. ‘Easy enough to give someone an overdose if they’ve got no tolerance.’
‘Right.’ Thorne stood up and they began walking towards the flat. On the other side of the road a few more mobile phones were raised to begin shooting stills and video. ‘Having said all that, I mean … Slayer?’
‘That’s a decent motive in itself,’ Holland said.
‘Could easily have been a mercy killing.’
There were more pictures being taken in the now crowded room where Allen’s body had been discovered, though the cameras were a little more sophisticated and, with the exception of the jury at any resulting court case, the films and photos were not intended for public consumption. The police cameramen moved easily around the crime scene examiners, weaving between assorted groupings of forensic scientists and fingerprint officers, each team intimately acquainted with the working practices of the others as they calmly went about their tasks.
Bagging, tagging, scraping.
Thorne could never watch any of them work without being reminded of how clumsy his own efforts seemed by comparison. These were the men and women who did the real detection, while he blundered around hoping to get lucky and banging his head into a succession of brick walls. At its best, there was a kind of … grace to what they did, though this was not to say that their manner was always delicate, or necessarily deferential to the corpse around which they crouched and crept.
