Death Message by Mark Billingham Page B

with the bed-sheets or a bottle of smuggled painkillers.'
    Nicklin's expression didn't waver. 'Seriously, I'm touched. And it's good, you know, that the pair of us have been keeping an eye on each other.'
    Thorne felt the colour rising. ' What ?'
    Nicklin waved the question aside, as though he preferred to delay such prosaic push and shove for a little longer. 'You've not changed much, I don't think.' He pointed at the straight scar that ran along Thorne's chin. 'This is new. And there's a lot more grey in the hair. Looking pretty good, though.'
    Thorne could not say the same thing. He didn't know if the baldness had been Nicklin's choice, but the creased and pitted head only emphasised a weight gain far greater than might normally have been expected from an extended diet of prison food. If his teeth were looking better, the other features had sunk into the jaundiced flesh of his face. A rash of tiny whiteheads was clustered just inside one nostril. There was dry skin along the lines of both lips. But the eyes were warm still, and seductive.
    'What did you mean?' Thorne asked. 'When you said Brooks was doing you a favour.'
    The Legal Visits Area was little more than a large corridor with a series of interview booths running off it. Each had a thick, Perspex wall at the front, so that the prisoner could remain 'in sight and out of hearing' of the prison officers on patrol, with CCTV cameras angled in such a way that any documentation could not be seen. On either side, inmates were meeting with solicitors or probation officers, and muffled voices, raised as often as not, bled through the flimsy partitions that separated one booth from the next. For a few seconds before he spoke, Nicklin gazed around as if he'd never been there before. As though he were suddenly amazed at the dirty finger-marks on the glass, at the drabness of the pale yellow walls and the MDF. 'You do know about his girlfriend and the kid?' he said. 'The reason why this is happening?'
    Thorne nodded.
    'Right, well, you can imagine how fired up he was then. A fortnight before he was due to get out. He went through that whole fucking hippy-dippy range of shit you're supposed to go through when you lose someone: guilt, denial, rage, acceptance, whatever. Only he went through them fast, and he never quite got to the nice toasty part at the end. Marcus was just left with the rage, and it did him a power of good. It made him able to deal with what had happened, to make decisions. It reconfigured him.'
    'Why was he so sure it was the Black Dogs who were responsible?'
    'Someone in here passed the word. I don't know who, but those fuckers made certain he got the message.' Nicklin widened his eyes. 'They wanted him in pain, and he was. He still is, I know that much. But now, so are they. All he talked about before he got released was how much he was going to make them suffer in return. We talked about it a lot.'
    'You must have fucking loved that,' Thorne said. 'Someone else you could send out there and encourage to kill.'
    'I did nothing, I swear. Marcus didn't need any encouragement. I just made the odd . . . suggestion.'
    'The pictures?'
    'I asked if he'd mind sending you the messages.'
    Thorne leaned forward, but Nicklin did not back away an inch from him in return. 'Where did you get my number?'
    Nicklin puffed out his cheeks. 'For someone who clearly has a brain, you can be as thick as shit sometimes. And careless.'
    Thorne's mind was racing through scenarios. He knew Nicklin was good with computers, and must have had access to them inside. Had he been hacking into phone records? If he could get them . . .
    'Three things.' Nicklin raised his fingers one at a time. 'Shop around for your utilities. Try to keep that overdraft under control a bit. And stop eating so many takeaways, or I swear you'll end up as porky as I am.'
    Thorne took a few seconds to get it, then almost laughed, despite the horrendous possibilities. 'You've had someone going through my bin?'
    'A