Die of Shame by Mark Billingham Read Free Book Online

nothing to indicate that drugs had been found on the premises, but Tanner nevertheless considered it an angle worth pursuing. They were all worth pursuing, unless and until the evidence proved her wrong.
    Tanner noticed a dirty mug on the desk Hendricks was sitting at. A caption on the side: I SEE DEAD PEOPLE .
    Hendricks saw her looking. ‘Not mine, but pretty funny.’
    Tanner’s contempt for the flippancy did not last long. She was still thinking about the slogans on the wall of that kitchen in Victoria.
    Thinking about suffering and secrets and someone who had rotted into their own floorboards, as alone as it was possible to be.
    On her way out, Tanner said, ‘Doesn’t anyone mind about all that?’ She waved a finger towards Hendricks’ face.
    ‘Only you, Nicola.’
    Tanner was concerned about hygiene as much as anything else. Earlier, in the post-mortem suite, she had imagined Hendricks bending over the slab and some stud or hook popping loose and dropping into a cadaver’s guts. ‘Don’t the relatives ever say anything?’
    Hendricks stood up and shook his head. The smile was still there, but thinner. He folded his arms.
    ‘Really? Nobody ever complains?’
    ‘Only my boyfriend.’ Hendricks put his tongue behind his bottom lip, pushed out the pointed stud and leaned towards Tanner. ‘If this gets caught on his ballsack.’
    ‘Oh for God’s sake,’ Tanner said.
     
    Walking back to the station, Tanner picked up a message from one of her DCs. Dipak Chall could do with a little more focus sometimes, but he was bright enough and was not a clockwatcher. She called him straight back.
    ‘This is all sitting on your desk, ma’am,’ he said, ‘but I thought you’d want to know straight away. We got three matches on prints from the crime scene.’
    ‘Three?’
    ‘First one’s our victim. Done for shoplifting seven months ago. A five hundred quid fine and community service.’
    It had begun to rain. Tanner stopped beneath the awning of a café and dug her umbrella from her shoulder bag.
    ‘The other two are a bit more juicy. We’ve got assault, solicitation and possession of class A drugs. That’s all one person, by the way.’
    ‘Good.’ Tanner was pleased that her notion that the murder might be drug related was starting to look well founded.
    ‘Left the best until last.’
    Tanner said, ‘Right?’ and stepped out into the rain.
    ‘Drugs again, this time possession with intent to sell. We’re going back fifteen years, but considering what we know already, it’s still the most interesting.’
    ‘Because…?’
    Tanner kept moving as Chall gave her the name, the phone pressed hard to her ear, rain drumming against her umbrella. She waited for the pedestrian lights to change at Vauxhall Bridge Road, then picked up her pace.
    Interesting was right.

… NOW
     
    The tube journey home to Hammersmith was every bit as uncomfortable as it had been coming the other way, as it always was when Tanner was working days. Lucky if she got a seat, only to spend the journey tense and shifting position almost constantly so as not to let her feet or knees make contact with anyone. Worse still standing, crushed against the bodies of people every bit as miserable as she was; bags and hair and stink.
    On the ten-minute walk from the station, she tried to shake off the stress of the journey and the day that had preceded it.
    She wanted to take none of it with her into the house.
    Her better half, while acknowledging how important Tanner’s job was, had made it clear early on that there were things which had no place being discussed at home. ‘Office stuff, gossip and whatever, that kind of thing’s all fine, course it is, love, but I can’t deal with anything… squalid. It’s not like I don’t know what goes on in the world. How can you not? Just turn on the television, you can’t get away from it. But that doesn’t mean I have to deal with it while we’re eating dinner or I’m lying next to you in bed at