Death Message by Mark Billingham Read Free Book Online Page B

it just slipped his mind.' Thorne took the stairs two at a time. 'You know what it's like. You batter someone to death, take their photo, forget all about it . . .'
    'It might be significant, you know? Something about the day he chose.'
    'What? His birthday?' Thorne turned to Holland, palms raised. 'First Monday in the month? Let's not forget how close it was to November the fifth. Maybe this bloke's got a thing about bonfires.'
    'I was only thinking aloud.'
    Thorne stopped at the door and took a breath. 'Sorry, mate.' There had been more anger than upset in Holland's tone, but Thorne still felt like a twat for being snappy. 'Maybe he's just another fucking mentalist, Dave. You know?'
    Outside, Thorne stopped to talk to the video cameraman who was packing away his equipment, while Holland reached for cigarettes. A young couple with a pushchair appeared from between two unit vehicles and marched up to the crime scene tape.
    The man leaned across and shouted to Thorne: 'What are you filming?'
    Holland opened his mouth, but Thorne beat him to it. 'It's a new TV show about a maverick, gay pathologist.' He put a hand on Holland's shoulder, as if to introduce the star of the show. 'You know the sort of thing. Fuzzy black-and-white bits, half a dozen serial killers in every episode . . .'
    The clocks going back seemed to have brought the rush hour forward, and the North Circular was already starting to snarl up as Thorne nosed the car towards Finchley.
    'Things seem to be going well with DI Porter,' Holland said. 'It's a few months now, isn't it?'
    Thorne searched Holland's face, but saw only honest curiosity. 'Five, give or take a week. That's a long time for me.'
    'It's good . . .'
    Thorne wasn't about to argue. 'How's Chloe?'
    Holland grinned. His daughter had turned three years old a couple of months earlier. 'Can't shut her up,' he said. 'Coming out with all sorts of weird shit. Stuff she's picking up at nursery, whatever. She's going a couple of days a week now. I told you that, didn't I?'
    It was the first Thorne had heard of it, but he nodded anyway.
    'Sophie's trying to do some work part time, you know? That'll be good for everyone, I reckon.'
    'Right . . .'
    Holland had been nodding while he spoke. He carried on after he'd turned to look out of the window, as though he were trying to convince himself.
    'Definitely,' Thorne said.
    It was natural that he hadn't seen quite so much of Holland outside the Job since Chloe had come along. But even when they spent time together at work, Thorne thought that he and Holland weren't connecting in a way that perhaps they once had. He could see that his colleague - was he a colleague now, as opposed to a friend? - had a lot more on his plate since being made up to sergeant the year before, but Thorne wondered if it didn't also have something to do with the more subtle demands of a family. With the grinding drive to become the sort of police officer Holland had once professed to despise: the head-down and shut-the-fuck-up kind of copper his father had been. The copper that sometimes, when he'd upset one too many of the wrong people, Thorne wished he had it in himself to be.
    Pulling away from the lights at Henley's Corner, something beneath the BMW's bonnet began to complain, and as Thorne wondered just how hard the complaint was going to hit his wallet, the jokes began. However uncertain things might be, however far they shifted, there would always be Holland's shtick about the car: the fact that it was yellow and almost as old as he was, and that Thorne could have bought a new one for what it cost him in repairs every year.
    And it was all fair enough.
    Coppers solved crimes or they didn't. They laid down their lives to protect others and they shot innocent men for looking swarthy in the wrong place at the wrong time. But smart or stupid, honest or bent, they all took the piss. Took it, and had it taken.
    And you didn't need a psychology degree to figure out why.
    Some were better at