Lazy Bones by Mark Billingham Read Free Book Online Page B

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    twice already. He opened a window but shut it after half a minute, the breeze not worth the noise.
    Hol and looked up from his pamphlet again. 'Do you think they should have luxuries in there? You know, TVs in their cel s and whatever? PlayStations, some of them have got...'
    Thorne turned the sound down a little and glanced up at the sign as the Mondeo roared past it. They were approaching the Milton Keynes turnoff. Stil fifty miles from London.
    Thorne realised, as he had many times before, that for al the time he spent putting people behind bars, he gave precious little thought to what happened when they got there. When he did think about it, weigh al the arguments up, he supposed that, al things considered, a loss of freedom was as bad as it could get. Above and beyond that, he wasn't sure exactly where he stood.
    He feathered the brake, dropped down to just under seventy and drifted across to the inside lane. They were in no great hurry...
    Thorne knew, as much as he knew anything, that murderers, sex offenders, those that would harm children, had to be removed. He also knew that putting these people away Was more than just a piece of argot. It was actual y what they did. What he did. Once these offenders were ... elsewhere, the debate as to where punishment ended and rehabilitation began was for others to have. He felt instinctively that prisons should never become.., the phrase 'holiday camps' popped into his head. He chided himself for beginning to sound like a slavering Tory nutcase. Fuck it, a few TVs was neither here nor there. Let them watch the footbal or shout at Chris Tarrant if that was what they wanted...
    Sadly, by the time Thorne had formulated his answer to the question, Hol and had moved on to something else.
    'Bloody hel .' Hol and looked up from the pamphlet. 'Sixty per cent of goal nets in the English league are made by prisoners. I hope they've made the ones at White Hart Lane strong enough, the stick Spurs get from other teams...'
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    'Right...'
    'Here's another one. Prison farms produce twenty mil ion pints of milk every year. That's fucking amazing...'
    Thorne was no longer listening. He was hearing nothing but the rush of the road under the wheels and thinking about the photograph. He pictured the hooded woman, the make-believe Jane Foley, feeling a stirring in his groin at the image in his head of her shadowy nakedness.
    Wherever he got it from...
    Suddenly, Thorne knew where he might go to find the answer, at least any answer there was to be found. The woman in that photo might not be Jane Foley, but she had to be somebody, and Thorne knew just the person to come up with a name.
    When he started to listen again, Hol and was in the middle of another question.
    '... as bad as this? Do you think prisons are any better than they were back in...?' He pointed towards the cassette player.
    '1969,' Thorne said. Johnny Cash was singing the song he'd written about San Quentin itself. Singing about hating every inch of the place they were al stood in. The prisoners whooping and cheering at every complaint, at each pugnacious insult, at every plea to raze the prison to the ground.
    'So?' Hol and waved his pamphlet. 'Are prisons any better now than they were then, do you think? Than they were thirty-odd years ago?'
    Thorne pictured the face of a man in Belmarsh, and something inside hardened very quickly.
    'I fucking hope not.'
    At a little after six o'clock, Eve Bloom double-locked the shop, walked half a dozen paces to a bright red front door, and was home.
    It was handy renting the flat above her shop. It wasn't expensive, but she'd have paid a good deal more for the pleasure of being able 45
    to tumble out of bed at the last possible minute, the coffee steaming in her own mug next to the til as she opened up. Every last second in bed was precious when you had to spend as many mornings as she did, up and dressed at half past stupid. Walking around the flower market at New Covent Garden,