Read Online Scaredy cat by Mark Billingham - Free Book Online

chair. He should have gone home much earlier. Even with a smooth run back to Kentish Town, it would be ten o'clock by the time he got in. Another couple of hours to wind down meant getting to sleep late and waking up pissed off. Hendricks, by contrast, sounded relaxed. Thorne could picture him, legs up on a piece of sixties' black-leather furniture, some skinhead in the kitchen making them both dinner.
    'That bad?' Hendricks asked.
    'Sorry?'
    'Birmingham. Doesn't matter, tell me tomorrow. Listen, bit of good news. Catch the bastard, we'll put him away. There was plenty of Ruth Murray's own tissue under her fingernails, but loads of his as well. Profile should come through some time tomorrow.'
    It was very good news. Now he would at least drive home in a good mood. 'No need to test those teardrops you were so excited about then?'
    Hendricks snorted. 'Nah, tell you the truth it were a fuck of a long shot. We might have had a chance if he'd worn contact lenses.'
    Thorne was intrigued. 'This sounds good...'
    'Obvious really. A foreign body in the eye would cause a certain amount of irritation so the tear fluid would probably have contained more cellular material. See? Even better if he'd cried out of his nose actually...'
    'I don't want to know...'
    'It's all academic now anyway.'
    'No chance of a Nobel prize just yet then?'
    'One day, mate.'
    Thorne folded up the post-mortem report and started putting papers into his briefcase. 'Never mind, it told us something about him anyway...' There was no response. Thorne heard someone talking to Hendricks. He heard his friend's muffled voice answering, then heard the hand being taken off the mouthpiece.
    'Sorry Tom, dinner's nearly ready.' Hendricks's voice dropped to a whisper. 'Got myself a cracker here, mate. Nice arse, and handy in the kitchen. Sorry, what were you on about?'
    'The tears. I'm not sure exactly what they tell us about him, mind you.'
    'Well, we know he was in a better mood than when he killed Carol Garner.'
    Thorne stood up and closed his case. He might make it home by quarter to, with a following wind. 'Right...'
    'No, I mean it. Go through the report, it's obvious. He must have calmed down or something. Maybe whatever the fucker was on had worn off. It's a very different attack. The hyoid is intact, there's only minimal damage to the cartilage...'
    Then Thorne could feel the tingle. The small current running up the nape of his neck. Making him catch his breath. Almost sexy... Something that had been nagging at him was coming into focus, revealing itself. He sat down again, opened the case and pulled out the post-mortem report. 'Take me through this slowly can you, Phil?'
    Opening the report now, tearing pages as he turns them too quickly, speed-reading, his breath getting shorter by the second as Hendricks turns their murder case into something altogether more disturbing.
    'OK... externally, both bodies were much the same, Murray and Garner, but internally it's a different story. Ruth Murray died from a slower, more sustained pressure on the artery. Call it a slow, hard squeezing. Carol Garner was nothing like that. She had bruises on the back of her skull where he smacked her head on the floor as he was throttling her. That was.., frenzied. With Ruth Murray it was different. Maybe he'd got the anger out of his system. Maybe that's his pattern. You tell me mate...'
    Then, Thorne knew. No, not his pattern...
    The tears. A big man's tears on a body, outdoors. A body less damaged, wept upon. Elsewhere, a child in a house, nuzzling what was once the sweet-smelling neck of his mother, now bruised, and bloody, and broken inside. The wrapper from a chocolate bar, discarded... Was he taller than your Granddad?
    And Charlie Garner slowly, defiantly, shaking his head.
    'Phil, can I call you back... ?'
    Tired as he was, Holland had still not left. Thorne's expression, as he burst into the office next door, was enough to wake him up in a second.
    'The stabbings.., tell me about