Lazybones

'Which is?'

'Your taste in music.'

'Eh?'

'The poor sod's had to make himself a bit conspicuous in the end. We got the nod eventually because by all accounts he's spent the last four weeks trying to get rid of your bloody CD collection.'

'What?' Thorne's relief was all but cancelled out by his outrage… By now, Barratt was making no attempt to hide his enjoyment.

'Couldn't pay anybody to take 'em off his hands, by all accounts. Been dragging them round every market and second-hand place in London…'

'Enjoy yourself, Chris. As long as I get them all back.'

'Listen, if I was you, when you do get them back, why don't you stick a few by the window, where people can see them. You know, as a deterrent…'

'I'm not listening. Just call me when you've nicked him, all right?'

'Fine…'

'And I'll want five minutes.'

'No problem. I'm here all day…'

'Not with you, smartarse. With him…'

TWENTY

He'd seen comedians on TV talking about how women could hold a hundred thoughts in their heads at one time and juggle an assortment of tasks, while men were incapable of doing even two things at once. Wanking and maneuvering a mouge was about as much as a man could manage.

Even though he knew it was nonsense, he still found the joke funny. Even as he sat working and planning the next killing… Multi-tasking was something of a specialty, had to be, and even though the slightly more socially unacceptable stuff he did was the more exciting, he actually enjoyed the day job too. He took pride in what he did. Of course, he couldn't have done the other things without it.

The next killing…

He didn't know for certain yet if the next would also be the last, but in a lot of ways it made sense. It would round things off very nicely. This one would be different in many ways of course, more symbolic than the others, but certainly no less enjoyable for it. A date had yet to be set, but that was the final detail. The victim had been selected weeks ago. In fact, he'd pretty much selected himself.

Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time… Thorne thought about the Restorative Justice Conference he'd sat through weeks earlier. He remembered Darren Ellis and the squeak of his shiny, white training shoes. He pictured the face of the old man who'd been sitting more or less where he was now… Opposite him, in the Interview Room at Kentish Town station, sat a boy who Thorne knew to be seventeen, but, apart from the unexcited eyes, the rest of him might have belonged to any skinny-arsed fourth-former. Noel Mullen was stealing cars to order while others his age had been nicking pens and pick 'n' mix from Woolworth's. By the time his contemporaries were sneaking into pubs and feeling up girls, Noel had already acquired a decent-sized drugs habit and a growing reputation with the police in North-west London. There was a room that should have had his name on the door, in the young offenders' institute that at one time had welcomed both his elder brothers. ' He still looked as if his mum should be washing his underpants and pouring the milk on his Rice Krispies…

'Why did you shit in my bed?' Thorne said.

The boy did a pretty good job of looking unutterably bored, but there was a jerkiness to the seemingly casual roll of the head, a tremor at the ends of the fingers. Thorne wondered how long it had been since he'd had a fix. Maybe not since he'd failed to sell Thorne's CDs, to turn Cash into cash and score with it…

'Come on, Noel…'

'What's the fucking point? You going to put in a good word for me, are you? Speak up for me in court?'

'No chance.'

'So why should I bother talking to you?'

Thorne leaned back and folded his arms. 'Listen, break into places,

Noel, by all means. It's your job, after all. Break in and trash them a bit if you have to, while you're looking for the decent stuff, the gear that's going to score you the best deal. I can understand that, I really can.

'Not just the posh places, either. Don't just do the rich bastards who you might, might have a legitimate reason to enjoy turning over. No, why not rob from your own? Dump on your doorstep. Do the ordinary, working idiots who live on your own estate, on the poxy estate that you've already done your best to make that little bit worse than it would have been anyway, by pissing in the lift and leaving dirty needles all over what passes for a playground. Smash your neighbour's door in and see how high a black and white TV can get you. Or some cheap jewellery. Fuck it, any good stuff, the widescreens and the DVDs, will have been rented anyway, so who cares? Stupid fuckers aren't insured, that's not your fault, is it…?'

'Jesus, have you finished?'

'Do it and feel nothing. See something and take it, because all that matters is what you might be able to get for it. Feel fuck all…'

'You're wasting your…'

'Feel luck all. Then see how you feel when one day one of your mates needs some cash and puts his foot through your mother's window. Size-nine Nikes tramping around your mum's living room, and going through her drawers. And maybe your mate's a little bit wired, a little bit over the edge, and maybe your mother's lying there in bed at the time…'

'It's because you're a copper.'

Thorne stopped, took a breath and waited.

'That's why I took a shit on your bed, all right?'

It made sense. Thorne wasn't so poor a detective that he hadn't considered the possibility that his flat had been targeted. That was the problem with Neighbourhood Watch. You didn't always know which neighbours were watching…

'How did you know?' Thorne asked.

'I didn't, not before I got in there. There was a photo that had fallen down behind one of your speakers. You, in your fucking PC Plod outfit…'

Mullen leaned back and folded his arms as Thorne had done. He looked at him, as he might look at a stereo or a VCR, evaluating it, working out whether it was worth taking.

'Your hair was darker then,' Mullen said. 'And you weren't such a fat cunt.'

Thorne nodded. He remembered the photo, had wondered where it had gone. It wasn't a picture he was hugely fond of, but still, Mullen's response when he'd seen it a few weeks earlier had been a bit harsh.

'So, you take one look at an old photo and decide to use my bed as a crapper, that about right?'

Mullen grinned, starting to enjoy himself. His teeth were browning where they met the gums. 'Yeah, more or less…'

'You cocky little strip of piss…'

Thorne's movement, and the scrape of his chair across the floor, caused Mullen to jerk back and stiffen, momentarily defensive. He appeared to recover his confidence just as quickly.

'Look, it was nothing personal.'

'And it won't be personal when I come round there, knock you over and shit in your mouth, fair enough? I'm a copper and you're a burglar. Right, Noel? Clearly there's certain things we have to do. '

Mullen's expression was closer to pity than boredom. 'You're not going to do anything.'

Other than strike a few poses to try to make himself feel better, there was nothing that Thorne could do. He wondered if the old man he'd seen sitting opposite Darren Ellis had felt as useless.

'Are you sorry, Noel?'

'Am I what?'

'Sorry. Are you sorry?'