Lifeless Page 13

Seeing them together, it became obvious. He flicked quickly through the Rolodex, furious with himself, until he found Russell Brigstocke’s direct line.

  Thorne pressed his mouth close to the handset, spoke quietly. “Don’t let Hendricks get bigheaded about this,” he said. “It’s good news, but it only leaves us with another question. And we still don’t know what the rest of it means.”

  “Maybe the bottom bit’s a club of some sort,” Holland said. “Maybe the A is for association. Something Something Football Association?”

  “We’ll figure it out.”

  “We need someone who does crosswords, like Inspector Morse.”

  “Inspector Morse never slept in a doorway or got thrashed at table tennis by a heroin addict.”

  “Sorry?”

  “I’ve got to go,” Thorne said. “Listen, I wanted to wish Chloe a happy birthday. I couldn’t get her anything, obviously.”

  “How the hell did you remember that?”

  It was a very good question. Thorne pushed open the cubicle door and stepped out. “I’ve absolutely no idea…”

  When Thorne returned from the toilet, Spike was sitting on the edge of the pool table, his legs dangling.

  “I’ve not moved any of the balls, honest,” he said.

  Thorne didn’t think for a minute that he had. There was no more need for Spike to cheat at pool than there had been on the table-tennis table half an hour earlier: he’d already been four balls ahead when Thorne had felt the phone vibrate in his pocket and excused himself.

  “My shot, right?” Thorne lined up a yellow ball. Missed it by six inches.

  There were several people watching. Each duff shot was greeted with a certain amount of halfhearted jeering and a less-than-flattering commentary.

  “No mercy,” Spike said. He put away the remaining red balls, then slammed in the black, acknowledging the apathy of the onlookers by raising the cue above his head and cheering himself.

  “Jammy fucker,” Thorne said.

  “You need to take me on later in the day, mate. When I’m a bit shakier…”

  Two men who might have been anywhere between twenty and forty stepped forward to play. Spike asked if they fancied a game of doubles and was impolitely refused.

  “The facilities are pretty good in here,” Thorne said.

  They walked away up a short flight of whitewashed steps, heading back toward the cafeteria.

  “Yeah, not bad.”

  “Not bad?” They walked past the TV room, then another that had been converted into a chiropodist’s surgery. A woman stepped out, asked if either of them needed anything doing. They kept going up toward the ground floor, the walls of the winding staircase covered with AIDS-awareness and drug-counseling posters.

  “Junkies don’t want a fucking chiropodist,” Spike said. “There’s nothing worth nicking in there, for a start. How much gear d’you think you can get for a box of corn plasters and some verruca ointment?”

  “It doesn’t mean no one wants to use it, though, does it?”

  Spike shrugged. “Nah, I suppose not. Maybe some of the old boys, like…”

  The center would soon be closing for the afternoon and there were only a handful of people left in the cafeteria. Thorne and Spike stopped at a large notice board, stared at the jumble of printouts, leaflets, and handwritten messages.

  “You ever hear of rough sleepers tattooing their blood groups on themselves?” Thorne asked.

  “Eh?”

  “Their blood groups. You know, AB negative, O positive, whatever. As a tattoo.”

  Spike stuck out his bottom lip, thought for a few seconds, then shook his head. “I’ve seen most things, like, but…”

  “It doesn’t matter…”

  Spike pointed at the notice board. “You’re right about this place, though, about the facilities. Look at all this stuff.”

  There were notices about computer-training sessions, film showings, and book groups. There were adverts for the latest performances by an opera company called Streetvoice, a homeless theater group, and a free course of DJ workshops.

  “Pretty impressive,” Thorne said.

  Spike pulled out a small bottle of water from his pocket, unscrewed it, and took a swig. “There’s a place in Marylebone that’s even better, but it’s a bit further out, isn’t it? They do some strange shit there, like. They were giving people free acupuncture last week, which is a bit over-the-top, if you ask me. I mean, I like needles, don’t get me wrong…” He cackled, offered Thorne the water.

  Thorne took a drink then handed it back. “Don’t some people get a bit pissed off, though? Like it’s all too good.”

  “Oh yeah.” Spike spread his arms. “They reckon laying all this on is encouraging the likes of me to stay on the street. Like there’s no incentive for us to get off our arses…”

  These were the same people, Thorne guessed, who thought life was too cushy in prison. That it was a soft option for many of those inside. He knew that when it had come to certain prisoners, he’d been one of those people himself.

  “Most places are fuck all like this, though,” Spike said. “You wait till you’ve been inside a few of the other centers. Some of them are well rough. You been in any of the wet places yet?”

  “I don’t think so…”

  “Wet. Means you can take booze in with you. Good from that point of view, like, but they’re shit-holes, most of them.”

  Spike crushed the empty water bottle in his hand. They moved away from the notice board and walked slowly toward the exit.

  “They can get a bit naughty as well, so you need to be careful. You look like you can take care of yourself, though…”

  A few months ago, Thorne might have agreed with him. Right now he felt weak and incapable. Then he remembered the anger that had boiled up as he’d dragged Moony from one side of the street to the other…

  Near the door that led from the café into the reception area, a trophy cabinet was mounted on the wall. There were a number of highly polished cups and shields, and a note taped to the glass showing the position of the center’s five-a-side team in the Street League.

  Spike turned to Thorne as though divine inspiration had struck. “I knew some football fans who had ’em. What you were asking about before. A couple of Chelsea boys who had tattoos with their blood group or what have you. They had blue dotted lines an’ all, tattooed around their wrists and necks, saying ‘cut here’…”

  Thorne thought about what Holland had been saying on the phone: Something Something Football Association. He found it hard to believe that either of the men with the mysterious tattoos was a football hooligan, but it might still be worth considering.

  It wasn’t as if she hadn’t thought he might be dead…

  While he was talking to Susan Jago, Stone told himself that it could have been an awful lot worse. It wasn’t exactly a bolt from the blue. They were the ones nobody wanted.

  I’m sorry to have to tell you that your son/daughter/husband/wife…I’m afraid there’s been an accident…I think perhaps you might want to sit down.

  Every copper he knew had their own way of handling those awkward moments, his or her own style. The death message was usually delivered in person, of course, but as this was more of a confirmation than anything, it was decided that a phone call would not be improper. Even so, he’d been annoyed when Holland had palmed the job off on him, but, all in all, it hadn’t gone too badly. He’d told Susan Jago about the hit-and-run; about the scar on the dead man’s arm that had been detailed in the postmortem report, and led them to believe that the victim had been her brother…

  “I don’t understand why they couldn’t get hold of any of us when they found him.”

  “Your brother had no identification, Miss Jago. There was no way to—”

  “How bloody hard did they try?”

  “I couldn’t possibly say, I’m afraid.”

  Sam Karim walked past Stone’s desk and raised his eyebrows. Stone shook his head, puffed out hi
s cheeks.

  “It’s just the thought that nobody was with him,” she said. “You know?”

  “Of course. We understand, and we’re all very sorry for your loss.” It was a phrase he’d picked up from American cop shows.

  “Couldn’t they have put something in the press and on TV? Like they did with the man I thought was Chris?”

  “They did. Locally…”

  Susan Jago repeated the word on an exasperated breath. There was a pause and Stone waited, expecting there to be tears. They didn’t come.

  “Right, well, I’m sorry to be…you know, the bearer—”

  “It’s all right. It’s a relief in a funny sort of way.”

  “I forgot to say, about the tattoos. We know now that some of the letters are a blood group. Your brother had his blood group tattooed on his arm. We wondered if you had any idea why.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t.”

  Stone began to doodle in the corner of his notebook. “So you don’t know what it means?”

  “I have to go now. I’ve got to try and find out where they’ve buried my brother.”

  “Right. I’m sorry…”

  There was another pause. Then: “Will you remember to thank Dr. Hendricks for me?”

  Brigstocke was clearly still on his diet.

  “You need to get a few pork pies down you, Russell. You’re starting to look gaunt.”

  “I can’t say that you’re looking too good yourself…”

  Thorne and Brigstocke had arranged to meet up in Chelsea, a good distance south of the West End. They stood together outside the Royal Hospital, lingering awkwardly for a few minutes like spies who’ve forgotten their code words, before they started to walk.

  “I was going to ask,” Thorne said. “That fascinating report I did so much work on at Scotland Yard. I do hope someone’s polishing it up.”

  “I think they binned it,” Brigstocke said.

  “Excellent…”

  They walked through the grounds of the hospital—still an almshouse for more than four hundred red-coated Chelsea Pensioners—past the National Army Museum and down toward Albert Bridge.

  “I bet Phil Hendricks is pleased with himself,” Thorne said.

  “Actually, he’s pissed off because he didn’t see it before. AB negative is the rarest blood group of the lot, and even though he typed those letters out himself several times on the postmortem report, he never made the connection with the tattoo.”

  “Tell him well done from me, but that he shouldn’t make a habit of it. If he carries on playing detective, I might have to start slicing up corpses.”

  Brigstocke laughed. “Quite right, too. God forbid he should make us look like we don’t know what we’re doing…”

  “Did you see the PM report on Jago?”

  “It was faxed over this morning, and I managed to get hold of the original SIO in Nottingham.”

  “And?”

  “It was a hit-and-run. As to whether it was a deliberate hit-and-run…”

  “We’ve got two rough sleepers,” Thorne said. “Both with practically identical tattoos, and both dying violent deaths. What are the odds of there not being a connection?”

  “I think we’re working on the presumption that they’re connected.”

  “It’s just a question of finding the link between Christopher Jago and our friend in Westminster Morgue…”

  It was a few minutes before seven o’clock and the bridge was already illuminated; the lamps swooping and arcing above the dusty-pink metalwork.

  “It blows this serial-killer shit out of the water, anyway,” Thorne said.

  Brigstocke looked genuinely curious. “I really don’t see why.”

  “The MO, for a kickoff. He runs one over in Nottingham, then six months later he comes down to London and kicks another one to death.”

  “More than another one.”

  “It’s the first victim that counts. It’s about him and Jago. The others are nothing to do with it.”

  “I’m not sure their nearest and dearest would agree, Tom…”

  Thorne hadn’t meant it to come out that way. All the same, he knew he was in danger of focusing too hard on the first victim, and of forgetting those still mourning the other men who had died. He thought about Paddy Hayes’s son pulling the plug; about Caroline and the others trying to smile through Radio Bob’s funeral.

  “So what about this blood-group business?” Brigstocke asked.

  On the left of them, Battersea Park lay spread out to the east. Thorne could make out a few joggers and cyclists moving along the avenues. There was some sort of event taking place by the Peace Pagoda.

  “I can’t see that it’s medical,” Thorne said. “The first victim didn’t have any condition that would make it necessary. What about Jago?”

  “No, nothing.”

  “Right…”

  “A bracelet’s a damn sight easier anyway.”

  “What about the football angle?”

  Brigstocke had already heard Holland’s thoughts on what the initials might stand for, and Thorne had told him what Spike had said about hooligans. “It’s possible, I suppose. We certainly can’t discount it.”

  “What’s your profiler make of all this?”

  “Well, it’s a bit early. Cochrane’s feeding the new information into his report and we should get something in the next day or two. He’s been considering the idea that the killer might be someone who used to be homeless himself.”

  “And he’s basing that on what?” Thorne asked.

  “The killer obviously has a knowledge of that community.”

  “Because he found a few rough sleepers? They’re hardly invisible, Russell.”

  “If he had lived in that world himself, feeling powerless and marginalized, and escaped it somehow, it’s possible that he’s trying to wipe out that part of his life. He’s showing that he’s got the power now. The money’s a symbol of that. How he’s worth so much more than they are.”

  Thorne looked sideways at him, held the look until eventually Brigstocke gave in and smiled; like he wasn’t exactly convinced by any of it himself.

  “And they binned my report?” Thorne said.

  They turned in to the park and walked down toward the all-weather football pitches. There was a game being played under floodlights and they stopped to watch.

  “I’m not a hundred percent sure the undercover thing’s working out,” Brigstocke said.

  Thorne, who had arbitrarily picked the team playing in red and begun rooting for them, winced at a particularly high tackle. “That must have hurt…”

  “Tom?”

  Thorne had heard him well enough. “I don’t know what you mean by ‘working out.’”

  “Are you really getting any more out of people than we were before?”

  “What about the information I got out of that fucker Moony?”

  “It’s not hard to threaten somebody, is it?”

  As if on cue, words were exchanged and a couple of players squared up in the center circle, every breath visible in the air as they spat curses at each other. Thorne and Brigstocke watched until they were sure no punches would be thrown.

  “All I’m saying is that we should maybe take a view on it,” Brigstocke said. “It’s been three weeks…”

  “Give me a bloody chance.”

  “I’m getting pushed on this…”

  Thorne turned from the game to look at Brigstocke. “I don’t know if anybody knows anything,” he said. “And I’m not expecting them to just spill the beans over a can of strong lager if they do. I still believe we need a presence, though, and by being part of that community, I’m learning stuff that I think’s going to help. I mean, Christ, if you’re willing to put faith in your profiler…”

  “A limited amount.”

  “You never know. If he’s right, by living as a rough sleeper, I might be able to get some idea of how the killer thinks. Ask him. I bet he’ll tell you it’s a good idea.”

  B
rigstocke couldn’t help but look impressed by the cheek of it. “You’ve always got an answer, haven’t you? Always got some angle.”

  “Whatever it takes.”

  Thorne turned around and they watched for another few minutes during which the team in red conceded two soft goals.

  “I need to get back,” Brigstocke said. “I’m in the shit for missing a parent-teacher conference.”

  Thorne stayed on, the solitary spectator, for a while.

  At halftime, the red team’s dumpy left-back trotted slowly across to the touchline. His face was scarlet, running with sweat, and the fat on his chest and belly strained against the nylon of his shirt. Thorne watched through the chain-link fence as he wheezed and hawked, bent to take hold of his knees, then threw up onto the Astroturf.

  It seemed as good a time as any to head back to the West End. Thorne turned and walked away, thinking, I know how you feel, mate.

  FOURTEEN

  There were a surprising number of places that gave out free food if you knew where to go and when.

  Spike had given him the lowdown early on, and Thorne had thought that it was quite an achievement to keep all those different names, places, and times in your head. On any one day in the very center of London alone, you could get a free breakfast, lunch, or dinner in one of a dozen different churches, hostels, and ad hoc street cafés. Some operated a ticketing system and with others it was first-come, first-served; some provided full meals, while others offered tea, coffee, and biscuits, or maybe sandwiches on certain days. With all these possibilities open to those in the know, and with a three-course meal available for little more than a pound at the London Lift, Thorne could not understand why so many were still willing to hang about in all weathers for a bowl of free soup on the street.

  Caroline had spoken like someone who knew what she was talking about. “Some people just don’t like going into places. You know? They’re not happy in buildings, for whatever reason. Centers like the Lift aren’t for everyone…”

  “And cheap’s not the same as free, is it?” Spike had added. “When you’ve got fuck all and there’s free stuff on offer, you take everything that’s going.”