The Murder Book by Billingham Mark

Author:Billingham, Mark
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2022-06-09T00:00:00+00:00

THIRTY-TWO

Thorne spent a good deal of Saturday clock-watching. When he wasn’t doing that, he was putting a barely scraped maths O-level to good use; trying to calculate what kind of pension he’d get if he chucked the job in now and work out if it would be enough to start a small business flogging second-hand albums, or go halves with someone buying a rundown pub, or set himself up as a Z-list gigolo. He knew his phone conversation the night before had a lot to do with his mood, but still.

It passed the time.

Most of the day was taken up with necessary admin, which suited the likes of Nicola Tanner, but had never been Thorne’s strong suit. Tits-deep in files and folders, they were alternately frustrated at hearing nothing from Hobbs and then excited when they did, though the excitement wore off quickly enough once the paperwork fairy began politely coughing to reclaim their attention.

There was plenty that demanded it. The cases Tanner and Thorne had been working before catching the Richard Sumner murder had not gone away or been passed on to others. Thorne still had work to do on a gang-related stabbing in Finsbury Park, while Tanner was chasing the forensic results on a domestic in Hornsey.

Understandably, both were finding it hard to focus.

The first call from Hobbs came mid-morning, to let them know that not only had K-Man rejected his lower offer for the pill bottle, but that he’d actually upped the asking price to £900.

‘Looks like we’ve rattled his bars a bit,’ Hobbs said.

The call was on speaker in Thorne and Tanner’s office. ‘Is that a good thing or not?’ Tanner asked.

‘Got to be good,’ Thorne said.

‘I agree,’ Hobbs said. ‘Now he knows he’s got someone who’s interested, he’s seeing how far he can push it. That, or he’s annoyed about the lower offer and thinks the buyer’s taking the piss. Either way, he’s hooked.’

‘Tell him you might lose the sale,’ Thorne said.

‘I already did that. Went back and forth a few times. He said it’s take it or leave it.’

‘OK, good. So, tell him you’ve passed that message on and now the buyer’s thinking about it.’

‘Will do,’ Hobbs said.

The ‘buyer’ was thinking about little else.

The majority of everyone’s time was naturally spent on pre-trial preparations for the three murders with which Rebecca Driver had been charged. The court date would be months away and the CPS had as solid a case as they could wish for, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a lot more work still to do. In many ways, the team had made a rod for their own backs, because the better a prosecution case was, the harder they had to work to ensure it did not get screwed up by some stupid failure in procedure; by being careless or taking the result for granted. A good many cases fell apart because someone forgot to feed a suspect often enough or have their fitness for interview assessed by the Force Medical Examiner; to get the correct form signed or say what was legally required of them on a recording.

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