Lazy Bones Read Free

shoulders.
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    'Good show, Darren,' Thorne said. He raised his hands and started to clap.
    El is stared, his mouth opening and closing, an uneasy expression that had definitely not been rehearsed. He looked for help to the officers on either side of him.
    Thorne smiled. 'What do you do for an encore? Always best to finish on a song, I reckon...'
    The officer to El is's left, a stick-thin article with dandruff on his brown polyester jacket, tried his best to look casual y intimidating. 'Piss off, Thorne.'
    Before Thorne had a chance to respond, his attention was caught by the figure of Russel Brigstocke marching purposeful y across the room towards him. Thorne was hardly aware of the two detectives leading El is away in the other direction. The look on the DCI's face caused something to clench in his stomach.
    'You want to restore some justice?' Brigstocke said. 'Now's your chance.' He pointed at Thorne with his mobile phone. 'This sounds like a good one...'
    It was cal ed an hotel. They also cal ed MPs 'right', 'honourable' and 'gentlemen'...
    The sign outside said 'Hotel', but Thorne knew ful wel that certain signs, in less salubrious parts of London, were not to be taken too literal y. If they al meant exactly what they said, there would be a lot of frustrated businessmen sitting in saunas, waiting for hand-jobs they were never going to get.
    The sign outside should have read 'Shithole'.
    It was as basic as they came. The maroon carpet, once the finest offcut the warehouse had to offer, was now worn through in a number of places. The green of the rotting rubber underlay beneath matched the mould which snaked up the off-white Anaglypta below the window. A long-dead spider plant stood on the window ledge, caked in dust. Thorne pushed aside the grubby orange curtains, leaned against
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    the ledge, and took in the breathtaking view of the traffic inching slowly past Paddington Station towards the Marylebone Road. Nearly eleven o'clock and stil solid.
    Thorne turned round and sucked in a breath. Opposite him in the doorway, DC Dave Hol and stood chatting to a uniform - waiting, like Thorne, for the signal to step in and start. To sink both feet deep into the mire.
    In different parts of the room, three Scene Of Crime Officers crouched and crawled - bagging and tagging and searching for the fibre, the grain that might convict. The life sentence hidden in a dust bal . The truth lurking in detritus.
    The pathologist, Phil Hendricks, leaned against a wal , muttering into the new, digital voice recorder he was so proud of. He glanced up at Thorne. A look that asked the usual questions.
    Are we up and running again? When is this going to get any easier? Why don't the two of us chuck in this shit and sit in a doorway for the rest of our lives drinking aftershave? Thorne, unable to provide any answers, looked away. In the corner nearesf him, a fourth SOCO, whose bald head and bodysuit gave him the look of a giant baby, dusted the taps of the brown plastic sink with fingerprint powder.
    It was, at least, a shithole with en suite facilities.
    Altogether, seven of them in the room. Eight, if you counted the corpse.
    Thorne's gaze was dragged reluctantly across to the chalk-white figure of the man on the bed. The body was nude and lay on the bare mattress, the spots of blood joining stains of less obvious origin on the threadbare and faded ticking. The hands were tied with a brown leather belt and pushed out in front of him as he lay, prostrate, his knees pul ed up beneath him, his backside in the air. His head, which was covered in a black hood, was pressed down into the sagging mattress.
    Thorne watched as Phil Hendricks moved along the bed, lifted the head and turned it. He slowly removed the hood. From behind, 14
    Thorne saw his friend's shoulders stiffen for an instant, heard the smal , sharp intake of breath before he laid the head back down. As a sOCO moved across to take the hood and drop it into an exhibits bag, Thorne took a step