Lifeless - 5 by Mark Billingham Page A

through the ramps and stairwel s at the thing that flashed and moved on top of the Hayward Gal ery. Somebody told him that the colours changed with the wind. Art, by al accounts. Wank, more like...
    The moon was ful above Waterloo Bridge. He could see figures moving slowly across, staring left and right, marvel ing at the view up and down the river. Stupid tossers. The best view of London wasn't from up there. London was happening down where he was, among the dopers and the dogshit. It was a city that came alive the lower you went, and he was starting to fit right in.
    Martin and Karen...
    He pictured them, in that blackened shed by the railway line, or in
    the park or the shopping centre, or traipsing through darkening underpasses, fol owing him, looking. Martin, his huge hands flapping in panic, needing to be soothed, needing to be coaxed. Karen, laughing at him, at his awkwardness and anxiety.
    Nicklin drifted off to sleep and dreamed about fucking them both.
    SIX
    Baynham & Smout was a large accountancy firm whose glass-fronted premises on Shaftesbury Avenue nestled next to those of film companies and publishers, a stone's throw from Chinatown and Soho. If, having spent a hard morning number-crunching, an accountant wanted a bowl of hot and sour soup and a handjob at lunchtime, this was a fantastic place to work.
    Thorne sat on a vast black leather sofa admiring the understated but classy artwork on the expansive white wal s. He glanced at Hol and on the chair opposite, leafing through the style magazine he'd picked up from the glass-topped coffee table in front of him. He wondered how much more it had cost to kit out this lobby, than it had cost to furnish his entire flat.
    Probably more than it had cost to buy his flat...
    He caught the eye of one of the two gorgeous young receptionists sitting at adjacent, walnut desks on the other side of the lobby. She smiled. 'Won't be much longer.' As the words echoed off the marble and glass, her col eague looked up and smiled as wel .
    Thorne nodded. One of them would only have been there for five months... He closed his eyes and saw an image from one of the photos in his ever expanding gal ery. She was lying on her side, her right arm trapped beneath her, and her left thrown high above her head, like a schoolgirl eager to get a teacher's attention. One high-heeled shoe was missing; it lay a few feet away, in a patch of nettles, and the dew glistened on her thin summer skirt. She was yel owy white, like the bone of some giant dog, gnawed and then forgotten. Her clothes hung on her like scraps of flesh, her hair like pale strands of gristle. The single patch of colour - the blood that had poured from the wound in her chest and dried overnight to the shade of old meat.
    Thorne looked over at the two girls busy at their computer screens
    when they weren't answering the constantly tril ing phones. He wondered which of them had replaced Jane Lovel .
    'Sean Bracher... sorry.'
    Thorne looked up to see a sharp suit, a proffered hand and a mouth
    with far too many teeth in it. Hol and was already on his feet and Thorne stood up to join him. He picked up his battered leather jacket and moved to fol ow Bracher to his office, but Baynham & Smout's Assistant Director of Personnel was going to do his talking to the police right there in the lobby. He flopped into one of the chairs, tossed his mobile phone on to the coffee table and cal ed across to the reception desk. 'Jo, a pot of coffee would be good...'
    Bracher was in his mid-thirties, with rapidly thinning hair, which Thorne guessed he was not at al happy about. Clearly an Essex boy made good, he could probably turn on an acquired sophistication when it was needed. With Thorne and Hol and, he'd obviously decided that matey was the way to play it: estuary vowels, laughter, innuendo. One of the boys.
    The coffee arrived quickly, and Bracher said his piece. 'I can only

    real y tel you what I told your col eague back in the summer. We're a