Scaredy cat by Mark Billingham

number-crunching, an accountant wanted a bowl of hot and sour soup and a hand job 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 walls. He glanced at Holland 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 colleague looked up and smiled as well. 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 gallery. 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 yellowy 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 trilling phones. He wondered which of them had replaced Jane Lovell.
    'Sean Bracher... sorry.'
    Thorne looked up to see a sharp suit, a proffered hand and a mouth with far too many teeth in it. Holland was already on his feet and Thorne stood up to join him. He picked up his battered leather jacket and moved to follow 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 called 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 all happy about. Clearly an Essex boy made good, he could probably turn on an acquired sophistication when it was needed. With Thorne and Holland, 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 really tell you what I told your colleague back in the summer. We're a big company and I tend to pick up on most things that are going on, but there's no way I can be on top of what the people here are up to in their own time. Having said that, there was no-one Jane had a problem with as far as I'm aware. I'm here for people to tell me stuff like that and Jane and I were good mates, you know, so, I think she'd have said something.'
    Holland placed his coffee cup back on the table. 'I get the impression that Jane was pretty much the life and soul round here. That she liked to enjoy herself.'
    There was a resounding raspberry noise as Bracher shifted on the leather chair. 'I think that's why what happened hit everybody here so hard. It can get a bit dull around here if you're not careful, and since everything went so bloody PC, some people can get a bit touchy if people try to... liven things up.'
    Thorne glanced across as a motorcycle courier came through the revolving doors, took off his helmet and strolled towards the reception desk.
    'Liven things up?' Holland said.
    Bracher leaned forward, elbows on knees, fingers intertwined. He had a serious point to make. 'Seventy-five per cent, at least, seventy five per cent of people meet their husbands, wives, or