Death Message by Mark Billingham Page A

job . . .'
    HMP Long Lartin in Worcestershire housed around six hundred of the country's most dangerous adult prisoners. Stuart Nicklin certainly fitted into that category. Thorne would never forget the face of a boy named Charlie Garner. A child forced to watch while his mother had been strangled; to sit alone for two days with her body, starving and dirty and howling.
    Thorne looked at Nicklin, seated across from him behind a shiny, battered table. He was wearing jeans and training shoes. A dark blue bib over a light grey sweatshirt.
    Not a monster, certainly.
    However those readers of the Daily Mail and others of a similar persuasion chose to label the likes of Stuart Nicklin, however the word seemed the only one fitting to describe what they had done, Thorne found it hard to believe that such offenders were naturally evil . The description suggested that others were naturally good . This was a concept Thorne found equally tricky to grasp. And it introduced a religious connotation into the discussion which made him hugely uncomfortable.
    Nicklin was a man, not a monster . . .
    'You had lunch?' Nicklin asked. Thorne shook his head. 'Very good today.' He patted his belly. 'Piling on the pounds, of course, but I'm hardly the type to work out all day, am I?'
    A man Thorne would be happy to see die in prison.
    In the pub the night before, Lilley had talked about there being a couple of those she'd put away on whom she'd always keep a watchful eye. Observe their progress through the system. It was the same for Thorne, and Nicklin was top of that mercifully short list.
    'Why is he sending the pictures to me?'
    Nicklin pretended to be taken aback. 'Bloody hell. You don't want to waste any time, do you?' The voice was quieter than the one Thorne remembered, and coarser. He presumed that Nicklin, like many prisoners, was smoking heavily. 'On a promise later on?'
    'You're not as fascinating as you think you are,' Thorne said. 'And I get bored very easily. Why am I getting the pictures?'
    Nicklin raised a hand to his face, brushed delicately at the side of his nose for a few seconds. 'That was a favour to me,' he said.
    Thorne tried hard to show nothing. 'Why does Marcus Brooks owe you any favours?'
    'I suppose you could say that I took him under my wing.'
    'I bet you did.'
    'Showed him the ropes when he got here.'
    Thorne had already checked. Like many prisoners, Brooks had been moved around. He'd spent time in Wandsworth and Birmingham before arriving at Long Lartin towards the end of the previous year. 'Was that all you showed him?'
    'No point. I could see Marcus wasn't interested in anything like that.'
    'Which probably made it even more exciting, right?'
    'Where are you dredging this stuff up from?' Nicklin asked.
    At the time of his arrest five years before, Nicklin had been married for several years, but he'd lived a number of lives under assumed names, and had worked, during one of them, as a rent boy in the West End. Thorne had no idea if Nicklin had a conventional sexuality of any sort; only that he would fuck anyone, in any way necessary, to gain power over them.
    'We were close,' Nicklin said. 'Friends.'
    'This is all very heartwarming . . .'
    'I was around to dole out the odd piece of advice when he came in here, and he did the occasional good turn for me. There's always someone wants to have a go at the local nutter, you know? Marcus helped me out once or twice.'
    'I thought you could look after yourself,' Thorne said. 'I heard about that poor bastard in Belmarsh.' Thorne had been sent a full report when, two years previously, Nicklin had left a fellow inmate brain-dead after calmly but forcefully jamming a sharpened spoon into his ear.
    Nicklin beamed. 'I'm touched that you've been taking an interest.'
    'Well,' Thorne said, 'I worry . We all do. Me and the families of the men and women you killed. Charlie Garner's grandparents. We like to be double sure you're still where we think you are. That you haven't got creative