Read Online Dancing Towards the Blade and Other Stories by Mark Billingham - Free Book Online Page B

Nothing seemed to have been disturbed and there were no signs of forced entry, save for the broken window in the back door. That was down to the woman now taking a good long sniff at the bottle, a young PC named Nina Woodley. She and her partner had been the first officers at the scene after the dispatch had been sent out.
    ‘That’s insulin,’ Woodley said, finally. ‘My brother’s a diabetic, so …’
    Thorne put the bottle back. He pulled off the thin plastic gloves and stuffed them back into the pocket of his Met vest.
    ‘Thing is,’ Woodley said, ‘it’s normally prescribed.’
    ‘So?’
    ‘There’s no label on the bottle.’
    They both turned as the bedroom door opened and one of the PCs who had been stationed downstairs stuck his head around it. Before the officer could speak, the on-call doctor pushed past him into the room; young, rosy-cheeked and rugger-bugger-ish. He spent no more than a few minutes examining the bodies, while Thorne watched from the corner of the room. Downstairs, Woodley hammered a small piece of MDF in place across the broken window while another PC made tea for everyone.
    ‘Right then,’ the doctor said. He closed his bag and checked his watch to get an accurate time for the pronouncement. ‘Life extinct.’ He sounded rather more cheerful than anyone had a right to be at quarter to four on a drizzly October morning.
    Thorne nodded, the formalities out of the way.
    ‘Nice easy one for you.’
    ‘How long?’ Thorne asked.
    The doctor glanced back at the bodies, as though one final look might make the difference. ‘At least twenty-four hours, probably a bit more.’
    ‘Sounds about right,’ Thorne said. The emergency call had come in just after 1.00 a.m. One of the children – a man, now living in Edinburgh – was concerned that he had not been able to get either of his parents on the phone since teatime the previous day. Neither of his parents was reliable when it came to answering their mobile phones, he had told the operator, but there was no reason why they should not be picking up at home.
    Searching the house an hour before, Thorne had found both mobiles, side by side in the living room. Half a dozen missed calls on each.
    ‘Assuming they go to bed nine, ten o’clock,’ the doctor said, ‘dead pretty soon after that, I would have thought. Obviously it depends on what they did, how long they waited before … you know, but insulin’s a good way to do it. The right dosage and it’s all over in about an hour.’
    ‘Right.’
    ‘Very popular with doctors, as a matter of fact. As a way to go, I mean. If you’re that way inclined.’
    Thorne nodded, thinking that coppers were more likely to be ‘that way inclined’ than almost anybody else he could think of. Wondering how most of them would choose to do it.
    How he would choose to do it.
    The door opened again and Woodley appeared. ‘CID’s here.’
    ‘Here we go,’ Thorne said. ‘Fun and games.’
    ‘I’ll leave you to it then,’ the doctor said.
    Thorne said, ‘Right, thanks,’ and watched the doctor gather up his jacket from the corner of the bed and leave the room without bothering to close the door. Pills, most probably, Thorne decided, but he guessed that if he were feeling desperate enough, then he might have other ideas.
    Just a shame that the quickest ways were also the messiest.
    He turned back to look at the bodies on the bed.
    They look tired, Thorne thought. Like they’d had enough.
    Paper-thin skin on the woman’s face. The man: spider webs of cracked veins on his cheeks …
    He could already hear the voices from the hall below; a bored-sounding, mockney twang: ‘Up here, is it?’ Heavy footsteps on the stairs, before the man appeared in the doorway and stood, taking a cursory look around the room.
    Detective Inspector Paul Binns was based at Lewisham police station, as Thorne was, though CID worked on a different floor, so their paths had crossed no more than a few times in the three